Relationships between traumatic life events, symptoms and Sense of Coherence subscale meaningfulness in a group of refugee and immigrant patients referred to a psychiatric outpatient clinic in Stockholm

This pilot study had the aim to test the long version of the Sense of Coherence (SOC) questionnaire and its relationship to mental symptoms using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐III‐R (SCID) and a battery of traumatic life event questionnaires, in a multicultural immigrant and refugee sample of 33 volunteer patients at a psychiatric outpatient clinic. The total mean value of SOC was very low: 104.6 (SD=13.7), which is over 30 points lower than most published normative data. Since the Cronbach alpha coefficient was very low in this sample for SOC, totally 0.17, we analyzed the subscale with the highest alpha, i.e., meaningfulness 0.62. The SOC subscale meaningfulness scores were significantly correlated with three of the four dimensions of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐III‐R used as well as with traumatic life events and mental symptoms. No gender differences were found. The results of this study are consistent with previously reported cross‐sectional data, i.e., that low SOC subscale meaningfulness is associated with mental distress and impaired functioning. However, these findings must be considered in light of methodological issues and the limitations of research in this area. Implications of these findings are presented, as are methodological issues that concern Antonovsky's measure.