What is Aaron Antonovsky's model of health? How does it compare to other models? What is its primary focus?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Aaron Antonovsky, a medical sociologist, developed an alternative model to the biomedical pathogenic disease model of health that he coined the salutogenic model. His salutogenic model uses the health continuum approach advocated by proponents of the biopsychosocial model rather than the diseased-healthy dichotomous model advocated by proponents of the biomedical model.

The salutogenic model's emphasis is on what people do right to facilitate health rather than on risk and pathogenic factors. It asks the following question: What are the underlying origins of health (i.e., salutogenesis) rather than what are the underlying origins of disease? Further underlying his model is the assumption that we are all subject to the laws of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics— that is, all ordered systems including life forms eventually become disordered and chaotic (e.g., an ice cube melting, an organism dying, wood rotting).