This page includes some of the work connected to NMHDU and our partners in the growing field of measuring well-being.Measuring well-being has been a taxing and challenging area for many years and has been a major block to initiating well-being programmes. Well-being is often put in the ‘too difficult to do box’ because of the inability to provide valid and accepted outcomes measures. However, this is starting to change as interest and evidence grows.
Measuring national well-being
The Office for National Statistics is developing new measures of national well-being. The aim is that these new measures will cover the quality of life of people in the UK, environmental and sustainability issues, as well as the economic performance of the country.
To develop better measures of the nation's well-being they want to
consult with people, organisations and business across the UK as well as
central and local government to ask what matters most in people lives
and what is important for measuring the nation's well-being.
Full details and online questions are available here
North East Public Health Observatory has produced a Mental Wellbeing Atlas and prototype work on an index published in a set of reports providing an atlas of regional and local authority level maps of factors that influence mental health and wellbeing to help to inform Joint Strategic Needs Assessments:
- The development of a prototype index of ecological factors affecting wellbeing in the population
- The Maps of Rates of Factors Relevant to Mental Health Problems
- Mental Health Well Being Index
- Atlas of Mental Wellbeing NEPHO July 2010
NEPHO’s work concludes that an index of factors influencing wellbeing, as opposed to wellbeing itself, is desirable because it would indicate the scale of the challenge for local work. www.nepho.org.uk/publications.php5?rid=805&hl=mental health
North West Mental Well-being Survey 2009 – A survey of 18,500 residents using the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale and other questions to develop a new baseline and understanding of the levels of well-being in the region. www.nwph.net/nwpho/Publications/Forms/DispFormbf8b.html?ID=208
The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale - this link takes you to a page which includes WEMWbs but also the work in Scotland on mental health indicators. www.healthscotland.com/scotlands-health/population/mental-health-indicators.aspx