Sense of Coherence in Long-term Adversity Conditions – Where Does it Help?☆

Abstract The study aims to evaluate how sense of coherence (including comprehensibility, manageability and attribution of meaning) relates with the expression of the experiences in long term adversity conditions. We studied 45 former political prisoners, imprisoned between 1948 and 1964 as opponents of the Communist regime in Romania. The instruments used were an in- depth (biographical) interview and the Sense of Coherence Inventory (Lundberg, 1995). The analysis included content thematic analysis of narratives and descriptive statistics of the scores from inventories. The results suggest that a strong sense of coherence can relate with the capacity to deal in long-term adversity conditions, as identified in the narratives.