The origin of health and the origin of disease are based on his theory of the “sense of coherence”, developed by him within the framework of psychosomatics and socio-medical psychology. This theory aims to explain why some people manage to maintain good health despite high levels of stress, while others break down with less stress. According to Antonovsky, disease is not seen as a simple lack of health or the result of purely biological factors, but as a dynamic process that arises as a result of a person’s complex interaction with the environment, where the level of adaptation and the ability to cope with stress are the main determinants. Antonovsky defines the origin of health as the “sense of coherence” of a person, which consists of three main components:
1) comprehensibility, that is, the ability to perceive and understand events as organized and explainable phenomena;
2) controllability, that is, the ability to use available resources to solve problems;
3) meaningfulness, that is, the feeling that life and problems are valuable and worth the effort.
People with a high sense of coherence are able to effectively interpret and adapt to stress, which increases their resilience to disease and supports physical and mental health. According to Antonovsky, the occurrence of the disease is associated with the lack of this sense of coherence. This leads to the fact that a person becomes unable to understand difficult situations, lacks resources to overcome them, or feels the meaninglessness of life trials, which leads to maladaptive physical and psychological reactions. Thus, the disease is interpreted not only as the result of organic or biological factors, but also as a direct consequence of a weak ability to regulate psychosocial processes and adapt to the environment. This places health and disease in a dynamic spectrum, depending on the ability of a person to create harmony between themselves and the demands of the surrounding life.