Good mental wellbeing — some people call it happiness — is about more than avoiding mental health problems. It means feeling good and functioning well. It can be helpful to maintain an awareness of your overall wellbeing. It can help you to identify the things that have an impact on how well you’re doing and give you more power in improving your functioning. The below wellbeing assessment is a tool to help you with this.

This wellbeing assessment uses the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) to measure wellbeing. More about the WEMWBS is below.

Why the wellbeing scale?

The WEMWBS is an internationally validated assessment of well-being that utilises strength based language less likely to be triggering or distressing for those who have been traumatised.

By integrating and promoting use of the WEMWBS on the Living Well site, we are very much aware that childhood sexual abuse and sexual assault can profoundly impact on an individuals mental and physical well-being.  We have included information on our website on some of the particular difficulties people who have been abused can face, as well as some ways of addressing these.

Our decision to foreground the well-being assessment is based on a knowledge that living a fulfilling, healthy, connected, active life is possible after sexual abuse and we do not wish to accept a lesser goal for all those whom we live and work with.

About the wellbeing scale

The WEMWBS questionnaire for measuring mental well-being was developed by researchers at Warwick and Edinburgh Universities (see Tennant R, Hiller L, Fishwick R, Platt P, Joseph S, Weich S, Parkinson J, Secker J, Stewart-Brown S (2007) The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS): development and UK validation, Health and Quality of Life Outcome; 5:63 doi:101186/1477-7252-5-63).

The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale was funded by the Scottish Executive National Programme for improving mental health and well-being, commissioned by NHS Health Scotland, developed by the University of Warwick and the University of Edinburgh, and is jointly owned by NHS Health Scotland, the University of Warwick and the University of Edinburgh.

The WEMWBS is subject to copyright. We are grateful that we have received permission to use and make available the WEMWBS. Click here for more information about the WEMWBS.