2007 年 20 巻 1 号 p. 32-41
Health psychologists, in addition to preventing people from developing health problems, are expected to play a role in helping ill people and those with physical disorders maintain their mental health. This study investigated the mental health of physically challenged people to clarify the relationship between psychological wellbeing (Ryff, DATE) and the sense of coherence (SOC: Antonovsky, DATE). Participants were physically challenged female athletes in the Japan Wheelchair Basketball Federation and a comparison group of non-challenged female members of a sports gym in Tokyo. The results showed that physically challenged female athletes had an equivalent level of mental health to that of female athletes who were not physically challenged, suggestive of a strong relationship between playing wheel-chair basketball and SOC. The strongest link was observed between the self-acceptance aspect of psychological well-being scale and SOC. These results indicate that continuous commitment to sports leads to improvements in SOC. It is concluded that improving psychological wellbeing and SOC can support physically challenged people to maintain their mental health.
