Sense of coherence as a stress moderator in students

Abstract

Professional training in the healthcare courses aims at the care of people with physical and emotional fragilities. The healthcare students, especially in the first year of their courses need a period of adaptation to deal with stressful situations, such as dealing with pain, emotional and psychological suffering, loss and mourning, with bodily intimacy and frustration.1 Researches carried out with nursing undergraduates verified the presence of stress, burnout and depression among them, and indicated as factors generating high stress, improper time management, high demand for theoretical and practical classes, and traditional and non-innovative teaching methods, according to the semester which course.1,2 The final periods of health courses lead to greater stress due to internships and future expectations: to get a job or complementing training with specialization or improvement courses? However, a prior question must be answered: how the stress and anxiety of younger healthcare students could be reduced? Or, how to promote stress coping resources for them? With the advent of positive psychology, in the last decades, researchers have developed studies to understand the influence of personality traits that are protective against stress and mood disorders. The Sense of Coherence(SOC) is a construct developed in the salutogenic model, proposed by Antonovsky,3 which suggests a holistic view of the individual centered on the generation of health through the regulation of emotional tension, besides positively influencing the decisions which affect quality of life: adoption of healthy habits and the choice to remain confident in the face of a stressful situation; persons with high SOC present higher disposition to face with the daily stressors.3,4 The SOC presents 3 components: the (a)understanding, that refers to the meaning that the person attribute to the stressful situation; (b)management, refers to the individual perception that his or she is capable to face and overcome the stressful situation, and the (c)meaning that is the feeling that life makes sense and that changes are welcome.5 Although Antonovsky3 initially stated that SOC develops in the first 3 decades of life, research has shown that this personality trait can be “trained” and strengthened throughout it.4 SOC contributes to reduce the effects of stress by modifying the perception of the situation, reducing the negative impact of stressors by cognitive assessment and coping strategies. These personality traits are highly desirable for health maintenance.6 Assuming that the students of the first semester begin the course with a higher perception of stress due to the changes that occurred in this period this study aimed to identify the perception of the general stress of this population and the presence of a sense of coherence as a protective factor to stressful situations.