Applying Salutogenesis in Vocational Rehabilitation Settings

Abstract

Rehabilitation services are more closely and directly linked to maintaining and regaining positive health lost by illness and by pathogenic side effects of health care than the provision of cure or care. There even exists some professional understanding that rehabilitation should start with the beginning of treatment and be integrated into treatment processes and not just follow after discharge of patients. But even the WHO definition of rehabilitation has a pathogenic bias by focusing on disabilities of people or on disabled people and not addressing their abilities explicitly. Therefore, salutogenesis still has to offer something and has an added value to rehabilitation as a supportive intervention for recovery processes. Within the wider field of rehabilitation, this chapter has a specific focus on vocational work-oriented rehabilitation, which is a combination of medical, psychological, social, and occupational activities with the goal of enabling a timely return to work after sickness absence. For that the chapter highlights how salutogenesis can be related to the design and implementation of vocational rehabilitative services. A summary of descriptive and intervention research is given on the impact of the sense of coherence (SOC) as a moderator on processes and outcomes of rehabilitation programs and on the influence of these programs on the development of the SOC. Recommendations for further research with more complex longitudinal designs are given.