It is impossible to understand what human health is, considering only pathogenic factors and studying various diseases. The concept of salutogenesis, created by the Israeli scientist Aaron Antonovsky, strives to explain how a person remains healthy despite stressful situations. While pathogenic factors refer to everything that causes illness, salutogenic factors mean all those that promote health. In the model of salutogenesis, “health is considered as a position on health ease and disease continuum, instead of positioning health and disease opposite to each other” (Bhattacharya et al., 2020, p. 17). Therefore, health promotion should include both models without committing to either salutogenesis or pathogenesis (Woodall & Freeman, 2020). Since it is essential to understand the causes of the onset and development of diseases and the factors contributing to the recovery and strengthening of immunity, people should evaluate both types of these factors.
Prisoners are a group of people that is often more affected by both types of factors than other groups. A person who ends up in prison faces constant supervision and restriction of contact and movements, which negatively affects his psyche and causes stress. All these factors are psychogenic pathogenic, but if only they are taken into account, it becomes incomprehensible why most prisoners do not remain depressed during their detention. According to the model of Antonovsky, mental strain is not always a pathogenic phenomenon (Bhattacharya et al., 2020). Successfully coping with tension, a prisoner gains new experience and increases his resilience. It is salutogenic factors that determine what helps a person cope with stress. It can be his genetic traits, social support of inmates or visiting relatives, or desire to achieve a specific goal. However, sometimes, there are cases when pathogenic factors turn out to be stronger and people “break down” in prison, being “among vulnerable and marginalized members of the population” (Ismail et al., 2019, p. 122). Therefore, both pathogenic and salutogenic factors affect incarcerated people; the consequences of the first factor directly depend on the impact of the second one.
References
Bhattacharya, S., Pradhan, K. B., Bashar, M. A., Tripathi, S., Thiyagarajan, A., Srivastava, A., & Singh, A. (2020). Salutogenesis: A bona fide guide towards health preservation. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 9(1), 16-19.
Ismail, N., Woodall, J., & de Viggiani, N. (2019). Using laws to further public health causes: The Healthy Prisons Agenda. Global Health Promotion, 27(2), 121-124.
Woodall, J., & Freeman, C. (2020). Where have we been, and where are we going? The state of contemporary health promotion. Health Education Journal, 79(6), 621-632.