Mental Health & Relationships: The WHO-5 — Understanding Your Wellbeing Score

A five-question check-in that has been translated into more than 30 languages and used in clinical settings worldwide. Here's what it measures and what your score means.

The WHO-5 Wellbeing Index is a short questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization, first published in 1998. It asks five questions about your experience over the past two weeks, rated on a 0–5 scale. It takes about 60 seconds to complete. Despite its brevity, it is one of the most validated measures of psychological wellbeing in existence.

The Five Questions

Over the past two weeks:

• I have felt cheerful and in good spirits
• I have felt calm and relaxed
• I have felt active and vigorous
• I woke up feeling fresh and rested
• My daily life has been filled with things that interest me

Each question is rated: 5 — All of the time · 4 — Most of the time · 3 — More than half the time · 2 — Less than half the time · 1 — Some of the time · 0 — At no time

Scoring: Sum the five responses (raw score 0–25), then multiply by 4 to get the final score out of 100, where 0 represents the worst imaginable wellbeing and 100 the best.

What Your Score Means

The WHO-5 is not designed to sort people into categories. It has one established threshold and one established rule for change — and that is deliberately all.

The threshold: 50. A score below 50 indicates poor wellbeing. It does not diagnose anything. What it does is act as a screening signal: the WHO-5 literature treats a score below this level as an indication for further evaluation, because poor wellbeing may be secondary to a depressive disorder or to something else entirely. If your score sits below 50 — particularly if it stays there across several check-ins — speaking to your doctor or GP is a reasonable next step. Not because the number means something is wrong, but because it is a signal worth taking seriously rather than explaining away.

The rule for change: 10 points. A difference of 10 points or more over time is considered a meaningful change. This matters more than any single reading. A score of 68 tells you relatively little on its own. A move from 68 to 54 tells you something real is happening, and it is the kind of drift that is very hard to notice from the inside.

You will not see the raw number treated as a grade anywhere in 100 Great Years, and there is a reason for that. Beyond the threshold and the change rule, finer distinctions in the score are not supported by the evidence — a 71 is not meaningfully "better" than a 67. Any app that tells you otherwise is inventing precision the instrument does not have.

What the WHO-5 Measures (and Doesn't)

The WHO-5 captures hedonic wellbeing — how you feel, day to day. It picks up on mood, energy, sleep quality, and engagement with life.

It does not measure:

• Purpose and meaning (eudaimonic wellbeing) — whether your life feels significant and directed
• Life satisfaction — a more reflective assessment of how your life is going overall
• Your own view of your mental health — a judgement that turns out to be related to wellbeing scores, but far from identical to them
• Specific stressors — job loss, relationship breakdown, bereavement won't necessarily show up unless they're affecting how you feel day to day

This is why the WHO-5 is not asked in isolation. The Mental Health widget pairs it with a separate monthly question asking how you would describe your own mental health, and the Stress & Recovery widget tracks stress levels and their sources directly. Three different questions, because they are three different things — and because the places where they disagree are often the most informative.

Using Your Trend Over Time

A single WHO-5 score is a snapshot. The value accumulates across check-ins: a score of 64 in one two-week check-in and 48 in the next crosses both the threshold and the change rule, and tells you something neither reading communicates alone.

100 Great Years asks the WHO-5 every two weeks, matching the instrument's own two-week recall window. The trend chart in the Mental Health widget plots the pattern over time, making gradual drifts visible before they compound.

The 100 Great Years perspective

The WHO-5 is not a clinical tool in the hands of 100 Great Years — it is a mirror. Five questions, every two weeks, that make the state of your psychological wellbeing visible in the same way a blood test makes metabolic health visible. The goal is not to chase a score. It is to catch the gradual drifts — the slow decline in energy, mood, and engagement — before they compound into something harder to reverse. Tracking wellbeing is part of building the engine for a long life, because psychological health and physical health are not separate systems. They are the same system.

If you are struggling, a questionnaire is not the answer — but it can be the thing that makes you stop explaining it away. Talk to your doctor or GP.

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making decisions about your health.