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

BACKGROUND 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. PURPOSE 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. KEY ISSUES 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. IMPLICATIONS 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.