Scientific background: Well-Being

About this test

The WHO-5 was introduced in 1998 by the WHO Regional Office for Europe and, with over a thousand validation studies in more than 30 languages, is one of the best-studied short instruments for psychological well-being. It's used, among other things, in primary care as the first step of a two-stage depression screening: scores of 50% or below are considered a sign of reduced well-being and, per common clinical practice, warrant further evaluation for depressive symptoms. Since 2024, the WHO itself holds the copyright to the WHO-5 and explicitly makes it available worldwide free of charge.

The systematic literature review by Topp and colleagues (2015) evaluated 213 studies from 30 countries and consistently confirms good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha usually above .80), as well as remarkably high sensitivity to change for a five-item instrument -- for example, over the course of treatment. That responsiveness to change, not just raw accuracy as a depression screener, is considered in the literature to be one of the WHO-5's biggest strengths compared to similarly short instruments.

Dimensions

Sources & license

• Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S., & Bech, P. (2015). The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: A systematic review of the literature. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(3), 167–176.

  The WHO-5 is copyrighted by the WHO and freely available under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO license (non-commercial use with attribution, share-alike). This English version uses the WHO's official wording.

  https://www.who.int/tools/who-5-well-being-index