The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale

What is the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS)?

The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) comprises of 14 questions that relate to an individual’s mental wellbeing over the previous two weeks. WEMWBS was developed through research conducted at Warwick and Edinburgh universities for NHS Health Scotland in 2006 and was developed for the measurement of mental wellbeing in the UK and is now validated in many other geographical locations.

The WEMWBS is a self-reporting measure designed to be completed by individual participants as a starting point to aid better conversations about mental health. It is used to help monitor mental wellbeing and evaluate the effectiveness of targeted interventions, policies and procedures which aim to improve mental wellbeing.

What is Mental Wellbeing?

The concept of mental health is one that exists on a continuum and is much more nuanced than simply the absence of mental illness or disorders.

The term ‘mental wellbeing’ describes positive states of thinking, feeling and behaviour, and enables people to cope with the stresses of life, build resilience and coping strategies and be better equipped to deal with the world around us. Mental wellbeing has two main components:

Feeling good (such as happiness, contentment)
Functioning well (good relationships with others and self-realisation)

Mental wellbeing is often referred to as ‘positive mental health’ or ‘wellness’ and is just one aspect of overall positive wellbeing, with other aspects including physical and social wellbeing. The WEMWBS is used to identify where an individual may be currently placed on the continuum of mental health and can help facilitate appropriate support to improve mental wellbeing.

Why is the University of Bolton using the WEMWBS?

The University of Bolton is committed to improving the mental health and wellbeing of both our student and staff communities, demonstrated by our existing strategies (University of Bolton Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2021 – 2026 and University of Bolton Suicide Prevention and Response Strategy 2021 – 2026) and more recently, our application to the University Mental Health Charter.

The University of Bolton is introducing the WEMWBS in order to:

Better understand the mental wellbeing of our students (individually and collectively)
Identify patterns and trends to offer targeted interventions of support for our students
Measure the effectiveness of our existing support provisions around mental health and wellbeing
Provide individualised support to students who score low on the mental wellbeing scale, offering proactive and preventative measures to reduce the onset of severe complex mental health problems (burnout).

Key information

The University of Bolton will be collecting and recording WEMWBS survey data confidentially and responses will be stored securely. Access to survey data will be limited to a need to know basis and will only be accessible to colleagues within Student Services.

The confidential recording of data will allow the University to:

Review individual scores to better understand support needs and identify appropriate interventions for support
Conduct data analysis on survey completion rates/results, identifying any themes throughout the academic year
Measure the effectiveness of existing support provisions and consider new initiatives that can better support our students

All on-campus University of Bolton students who reside in the UK will be invited to complete the WEMWBS survey from teaching week 4 onwards in semester 1, and again during semester 2 and towards the end of the academic year. Students will also be able to complete the survey alongside other therapeutic interventions available throughout the Life Lounge.

The survey is available here.

Students can complete the survey as many times as they like however, as the survey is intended to measure a student’s mental wellbeing and experiences over the previous 2 weeks, students are discouraged from completing the survey multiple times during this 2-week window.

Engagement with the WEMWBS survey and reflections on the questions asked can sometimes generate feelings of distress. Identifying that our mental wellbeing is not good is certainly not a bad thing and can often be a very important first step in accessing the right support and taking action to feel better. You don’t have to do this alone and the following support is available to all students throughout the duration of your studies: