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. 2021 Nov 24;19(1):260.
doi: 10.1186/s12955-021-01882-x.

Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS): performance in a clinical sample in relation to PHQ-9 and GAD-7

Neha Shah  1 , Mizaya Cader  2 , Bill Andrews  3 , Rose McCabe  4 , Sarah L Stewart-Brown  5
Affiliations

Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS): performance in a clinical sample in relation to PHQ-9 and GAD-7

Neha Shah et al. Health Qual Life Outcomes. .

Abstract

Purpose: This study assesses the construct validity and sensitivity to change of the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS) as an outcome measure in the treatment of common mental disorders (CMD) in primary care settings.

Methods: 127 participants attending up to 5 sessions of therapy for CMD in primary care self-rated the SWEMWBS, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and General Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) scales. SWEMWBS's construct validity and sensitivity to change was evaluated against the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 across multiple time points in two ways: correlation coefficients were calculated between the measures at each time point; and sensitivity to change over time was assessed using repeated measures ANOVA.

Results: Score distributions on SWEMWBS, but not PHQ-9 and GAD-7, met criteria for normality. At baseline, 92.9% (118/127) of participants scored above clinical threshold on either PHQ-9 or GAD-7. Correlations between SWEMWBS and PHQ-9 scores were calculated at each respective time point and ranged from 0.601 to 0.793. Correlations between SWEMWBS and GAD-7 scores were calculated similarly and ranged from 0.630 to 0.743. Significant improvements were seen on all three scales over time. Changes in PHQ-9 and GAD-7 were curvilinear with greatest improvement between sessions 1 and 2. Change in SWEMWBS was linear over the five sessions.

Conclusions: This exploratory study suggests that SWEMWBS is acceptable as a CMD outcome measure in primary care settings, both in terms of construct validity and sensitivity to change. Given patient preference for positively over negatively framed measures and statistical advantages of measures which are normally distributed, SWEMWBS could be used as an alternative to PHQ-9 and GAD-7 in monitoring and evaluating CMD treatment.

Keywords: Anxiety; Clinical; Counselling; Depression; GAD-7 mental wellbeing; Outcome measure; PHQ-9; Primary care; SWEMWBS.

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Conflict of interest statement

Sarah-Stewart Brown is the developer of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. William Andrews is the developer of Pragmatic Tracker software used to capture data.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
SWEMWBS, PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores with increasing therapy sessions
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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