Mental Wellbeing

The Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS) ia a validated 7-item questionnaire designed to measure mental well-being, focusing on positice aspects of mental helath over the past 2 weeks, such as optimism, relaxation and social connection.

The graphs show the distribution of scores on the SWEMWBS for all participants, and split by sex, on the first occasion that they completed the BrainWaves Cohort Study questionnaire.

The overall distribution of mental wellbeing scores shows a small uplift in the number of responses with higher scores, and the male scores show higher average mental wellbeing than the female scores.

The BrainWaves Cohort Study has collected responses from over 24,000 people aged 16-18 in schools across the UK, over three time points in 2024 and 2025.