Paediatric occupational therapy: addressing parental stress with the sense of coherence

Families of children who have disabilities experience multiple stressors. "Sense of coherence" (SOC) reflects a person's view of life and his or her capacity to respond to stressful situations.

The purposes of this paper are to (I) introduce the concept of SOC; (2) review the literature on the stresses experienced by parents of children with disabilities; and (3) discuss how SOC can be used to evaluate systematically and to address effectively parents' resiliency against stressors.

The literature shows a strong correlation between parental stress, avoidantcoping, depression, and low SOC. Preliminary evidence suggests that an early intervention program can help increase parents' SOC.

Occupational therapists can use the SOC as a framework from which to identify the strength of a parents' SOC, and, when deemed to be low, help create a process for enhancing resilience.