Interpreting the results of your Health and Wellbeing Check
You’ve completed your Health and Wellbeing Check and saved it as a PDF. So how do you make sense of the various answers you ticked?
This guide is designed to help you interpret the results of your Health and Wellbeing Check, so you can decide on your next steps.
Step 1. About how you feel
We know that pain can have a negative effect how we feel – on our mood. The five questions in Step 1 are designed to help you assess your mood health.
Step 1 is based the WHO Mental Wellbeing Scale in which mood health is described on a scale of one to 100.
To work out your score out of 100, simply add up all five of you answers and multiply the total by four.
Here’s an example of what we mean:
1 + 2 + 1 + 3 + 2 = 9
9 x 4 = 36
So, in this example, the person’s mood health score is 36.
What your score means
The higher the score, the better your mood health. Here is a breakdown of what the different ranges mean:
Score: 76–100
Your mood health is mildly affected.
We suggest you explore the resources in Ten Footsteps to Living Well with Pain, especially Footstep 8: managing moods.
Score: 26–75
Your mood health is moderately affected.
We suggest you explore the resources in Ten Footsteps to Living Well with Pain, especially Footstep 8: managing moods.
If your score is 50 or under, it may be helpful to have a further assessment with your family doctor or health care support.
Score: 0–25
Your mood health is severely affected.
Seek help soon from your health care team or GP.
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Step 2. About your pain
The first question in this step is measuring pain intensity. The second measures the level of pain distress you have been experiencing.
Pain intensity score
The figure you ticked means that is the level or intensity of your pain at the present time.
Pain distress score
If your score is between 0–4 then the distress is none to mild.
Explore Live Well with Pain resources to help you self-manage with less distress from the pain. Useful resources are Footstep 1, Footstep 2 and Footstep 8.
If your score is between 5–10 it means the pain has been distressing you moderately to severely for the past seven days.
Explore the Live Well with Pain resources and seek help from your health care team/pain support team. Explore Footstep 1, Footstep 2, Footstep 5 and Footstep 8.
The third question in this step is in two parts and measures how confident you are at managing your pain.
Add together the numbers you selected in the two parts to get your score.
Score: 8–12
Your confidence to cope with life despite the pain is good.
Explore the Live Well with Pain resources, including Ten Footsteps to Living Well with Pain, and see if there are local pain support groups, health and wellbeing activities / groups to help you keep your confidence level up.
Score 4–7
Your confidence to cope with life despite the pain is moderate.
Explore the Live Well with Pain resources, including Ten Footsteps to Living Well with Pain, and see if there are local pain support groups, health and wellbeing activities / groups to help you keep your confidence level up.
Score 0–3
Your confidence to cope with life despite the pain is low.
Explore the Live Well with Pain resources, including Ten Footsteps to Living Well with Pain, and seek a health and pain management assessment or review with your GP/health care team/social prescriber.
There may be local support groups for people with pain, sometimes called pain cafés and it may help grow confidence to see what support is possible. Working closely with your health care team who are skilled in pain self-care and managing moods and other issues due to pain is very helpful.
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Step 3. Other problems or difficulties
If you find you have chosen a lot of health areas where the pain is having an impact, it may help to review your current situation with your health practitioner.
They can work with you to set a series of specific plans to help steadily regain health and wellbeing.
Remember, it takes time to restore the negative impact of pain on health. Six to twelve months is not unusual, so remember to to be patient, persistent, and kind to yourself.
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Step 4. Your priorities for change
Narrowing things down to no more than three areas is useful because it makes it easier to focus on making changes. Working on your priorities might actually help with some of the other issues too. If not, you can always come back to them later.
It is always a good idea to seek support. Talk to your GP, health care team or social prescriber about how they can support you in your priority areas.
Explore setting goals in Footstep 4, and managing setbacks in Footstep 10.
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