WHO-5 Well-Being Index
WHO-5Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.
A 5-item self-report scale of subjective psychological well-being over the past two weeks; brief and widely used as a depression screen.
Ready-to-cite methods sentence
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Reliability & validation
Response anchors
At no time · Some of the time · Less than half of the time · More than half of the time · Most of the time · All of the time
Known limitations
Free to use with copyright acknowledgment (WHO). Very brief; a low score is a screen, not a diagnosis, and ceiling effects occur in generally healthy samples.
Original citation
World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (1998). Wellbeing measures in primary health care/The DepCare Project: Report on a WHO meeting, Stockholm, Sweden, 12-13 February 1998. WHO Regional Office for Europe.
Questions researchers ask
What does the WHO-5 measure?
A 5-item self-report scale of subjective psychological well-being over the past two weeks; brief and widely used as a depression screen.
How many items does the WHO-5 have?
The WHO-5 Well-Being Index (WHO-5) has 5 items.
Is the WHO-5 free to use?
The WHO-5 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.
Who developed the WHO-5, and how do I cite it?
World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (1998). Wellbeing measures in primary health care/The DepCare Project: Report on a WHO meeting, Stockholm, Sweden, 12-13 February 1998. WHO Regional Office for Europe.
Related scales
Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.