Mental health: Adults

The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) for adults aged 16+ years measures respondents' mental wellbeing based on their answers to 14 questions with a 5-point Likert scale. The range of scores runs from 14 (the lowest level of positive mental health) to 70 (the highest).

The mean WEMWBS score for adults in Scotland aged 16+ years in 2021 was 49.8. This was the lowest mean score recorded in the time series. For both men and women, the mean scores were lowest for those aged 25-34 years, with no significant variation by sex (45.6 for men, 46.4 for women). There are marked inequalities in WEMWBS scores across Scotland by deprivation. The Public Health Scotland website has more information on the WEMWBS.

The Scottish Health Survey reports on measures of depression and anxiety symptoms, previous suicide attempts, and deliberate self-harm, for adults living in Scotland. The prevalence of anxiety substantially increased over time to reach 14% of adults in 2018/19. This has remained the same in 2021. The percentage of adults who had ever self-harmed increased from 7% in 2018/19 to 10% in 2021, while the percentage of adults who had ever attempted suicide decreased slightly from 7% in 2018/19 to 6% in 2021.

Adult mental health indicators

Improving mental health is a national priority in Scotland. NHS Health Scotland, now Public Health Scotland, was commissioned by the Scottish Government to establish a core set of sustainable indicators to allow national monitoring of the adult population's mental health.

The first indicator set was published in December 2007 and consisted of 54 indicators and a cross-cutting ‘equalities’ dimension. Reports and documents describing how and why the indicator set was developed are available from the NHS Health Scotland mental health indicators page. The first report on the mental health of adults in Scotland was published in February 2009, Scotland's mental health and its context: adults 2009 (3.0MB). The report analysed 45 indicators from the 2007 national adult mental health indicator set, covering both the state of mental health and its associated contextual factors. The second report on the mental health of adults in Scotland, Scotland's mental health: adults 2012 was published in October 2012.

In March 2022, an updated set of adult mental health indicators was published by Public Health Scotland. The updated indicators are grouped by type: mental health outcomes including mental wellbeing and common mental health problems, and contextual factors including determinants (risk and protective factors) of these outcomes (see figure below). A report, Adult mental health indicators: construct rationales (337kB), was published alongside the indicators to give further information about the development of the indicator set.

Figure title: The framework used to organise the adult mental health indicators published in 2022. The number of indicators by domain are shown in (brackets). Source: https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/12202/adult-mental-health-indicator-set.pdf.