Context
The five questions ask how often, over the last two weeks, you have felt cheerful, calm, active, rested on waking, and engaged with things that interest you. Each is rated on a 0-to-5 frequency scale ("at no time" to "all of the time"). The raw scores sum to a 0-to-25 range, then get multiplied by 4 to produce a final 0-to-100 score where higher is better.
What makes the WHO-5 unusually useful is its dual function. It's a wellbeing measure (positive states across two weeks) and a validated screen for clinical depression — scores below 50 typically prompt a closer look, scores below 28 are a stronger indicator. A 2015 systematic review by Topp and colleagues in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics covered 213 studies and concluded the WHO-5 has "adequate validity both as a screening tool for depression and as an outcome measure in clinical trials."
The instrument is in the public domain and translated into more than forty languages. That accessibility is part of why it's become the default short wellbeing measure in primary care, workplace wellness, and digital health products. Five questions is short enough to repeat biweekly without fatigue, which is what makes it useful for tracking change over time rather than producing a single baseline.
One worth-knowing limitation: the WHO-5 measures positive states, not negative ones. A person can score moderately on the WHO-5 while still experiencing significant anxiety or anger — those don't show up directly. That's by design (it's a wellbeing measure, not a distress measure), but it means the WHO-5 works best paired with at least one mood-tracking touchpoint that captures the negative side of the affective picture.
How it connects to the Wheel of Life
LifeWheel uses the WHO-5 as the wellbeing pulse check. It runs at the end of onboarding to set a baseline, and then biweekly thereafter to track change. The score is private to you — never shared, never used for ads — and informs which spheres the app surfaces and which support resources, if any, get offered. Low scores route to behavior-activation-style habits rather than productivity ones.
Related terms
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