Well-Being Index

Mental well-being is how good you have been feeling lately - your mood, your energy, your sense of calm, and the feeling that daily life is worth engaging with. This self-assessment is based on the World Health Organization's WHO-5 Well-Being Index, a short, positively worded measure that has become one of the most widely used screens of current mental well-being in the world.

This is a reflective screening tool, not a clinical or diagnostic instrument. Although the WHO-5 is often used in health settings as a first-pass screen for low mood, it does not detect, diagnose, or rule out depression or any other condition. Its purpose here is to give you a structured, honest snapshot of how you have been feeling over the past two weeks - a starting point for reflection, and, if your results concern you, for a conversation with a qualified professional.

The questionnaire has just 5 items and takes about 3 minutes. Every statement is worded in a positive direction, so you simply rate how much of the time each has been true for you recently. Your answers combine into a single well-being result, placed against general adult norms so you can see where your recent well-being sits rather than a raw number in isolation.

The WHO-5 measures a single, unified construct: your subjective psychological well-being over the last two weeks. Rather than breaking well-being into separate sub-scales, it captures the shared core of feeling good - positive mood, vitality, and general interest in life - as one overall score. The five items each reflect a facet of that experience - positive mood, calm, energy, restful sleep, and interest in daily life - and combine into one band-scored result.

Because it is positively worded, the WHO-5 measures the presence of well-being rather than the absence of symptoms - it asks how present your good feeling is, not how much distress you carry. That makes it a self-report of your recent subjective experience, which is exactly what the WHO-5 is designed to capture, and not an external or clinical verdict on your mental health. A higher score reflects more frequent positive feeling over the fortnight; a lower score flags a period worth attention, not an illness.

The WHO-5 was first published in its current form in 1998 by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, as part of the DepCare project on well-being in primary care. Despite having only five items, it has excellent measurement properties: a 2015 systematic review of more than 200 studies found high internal consistency, sound construct validity, and good sensitivity as a screening measure across clinical and general populations, in many languages and countries.

It is used worldwide in research and routine care to track well-being and the impact of conditions and treatments over time, and to flag people who may benefit from a closer look at their mood. What it is not is a diagnostic test: it measures how good you have been feeling, not the presence or absence of any disorder. A low score signals that your recent well-being has been low and may be worth attention - a reason to reflect, and if it persists, to seek professional support - not a diagnosis. Used here as an educational self-assessment, it is best treated as a mirror for reflection.