HEALING ARCHITECTURE IN HOSPITAL DESIGN 51
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3.1 ANTONOVSKY’S THEORY OF SALUTOGENESIS
In contrast to the traditional study of the sources of disease, known as pathogenesis,
Salutogenesis is an approach to medical treatment and healthcare that focuses on the
origins of health. It was developed in the late 1970s by Aaron Antonovsky, a professor,
researcher and medical sociologist who was interested in answering the question of how
most people manage to live relatively healthy lives despite being faced with disease,
emotional and physical stress, social struggles and other challenges: “Given the ubiquity of
pathogens—microbiological, chemical, physical, psychosocial, social and cultural—it
seems to me self-evident that everyone should succumb to this bombardment and
constantly be dying” (Health Stress and Coping ). He wrote: “the question then becomes
not how some concentration camp survivors or poor people manage to stay healthy, but
how any of us manage to stay healthy—the question of Salutogenesis” . By shifting his
focus from disease to health, Antonovsky began to develop a systematic research
methodology with a focus on what promotes health, as opposed to what causes disease.
Finally, Antonovsky was concerned that the pathogenic approach implies a dichotomous
relationship between health and disease; that is, a patient is healthy in the absence of
disease. This idea precludes the possibility of disease and health being interrelated,
simultaneous and multi-dimensional conditions. In the 1990s, architect Alan Dilani
suggested that Antonovsky Salutogenic approach be applied not only to medical treatment
and research, but also, to the physical design of healthcare facilities as a means to promote
health. He suggested the use of Antonovsky theory to create Psychosocially Supportive
Design, a theory and framework that promote health through the design of the physical
environment. In order to understand how Salutogenesis can be applied to design, it is
necessary to identify some key concepts of Salutogenesis, the most notable being the dis-
ease/ease spectrum, the relationship between stress and tension, the role of personal and
social resources that one has available—or as Antonovsky calls these, Generalized
Resistance Resources—and sense of coherence. Antonovsky placed health and disease,
or ease and dis-ease, together on each end of a continuum.
He defined the health ease/dis-ease continuum as a: “multi-faceted state or condition of
the human organism” . He emphasizes that Salutogenesis is not about making a sick
person well, rather it is about identifying their location on the continuum, and mitigating the
stress that may move them towards the dis-ease side . One of the key defining
characteristics of the Salutogenic model is what Antonovsky refers to as a sense of
coherence. He defined sense of coherence as: “a global orientation that expresses the
extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that
(1) the stimuli derived from one’s internal and external environments in the course of living
are structured, predictable and explicable;
(2) the resources are available to meet the demands posed by the stimuli; and
(3) these demands are challenges, worthy of investment and engagement”