Since its development, WEMWBS has been widely adopted and successfully used in a wide range of settings.

The scales support positively focused interventions and all items inquire about positive aspects of mental health. As a result, the scales are well received by study participants, service users, and practitioners. Feedback from mental health service users and carers demonstrates a preference for WEMWBS over other mental health scales.

Key benefits of WEMWBS include:

• Widely used and valid in a range of settings including:
  • public health - for monitoring population mental wellbeing and evaluating mental health improvement programmes.
  • workplaces (including in occupational health), schools and colleges, local authorities and communites e.g. evaluating work of NGOs and charities.
  • clinical settings, particularly where the promotion of strengths, assets and recovery are important.

• Covers key aspects of psychological functioning : optimism, autonomy, agency, curiosity, clarity of thought and positive relationships; and positive affect (feelings): confidence, feeling relaxed, cheerful, having the energy to spare. (N.B. SWEMWBS, the 7 item scale, has a narrower coverage with more focus on psychological functioning).
• Facilitates a better understanding of mental wellbeing at both an individual and organisational level.
• Can offer greater credibility for mental wellbeing and help drive positive action and change.
• Enables comparison of different types of intervention and programmes to improve mental health and wellbeing.
• Can be used with whole populations and with targeted groups.
• The scales are used internationally and valid translations are available in a wide range of languages.