HERO Wellness Scale: Examining a new mental wellness scale.

BACKGROUND

Mental wellness has traditionally not been tracked by mental health clinicians. The aim is to examine the reliability and validity of the HERO Wellness Scale.

METHODS

Eighty-four college students (age ≥18) with and without psychiatric morbidity from a small, private college in the north-central United States enrolled in the WILD 5 Wellness Program-a longitudinal, quasi-experimental clinical trial that included 2 groups (intervention and waitlist). Mental wellness scores at the beginning of the WILD 5 intervention were assessed by the HERO Wellness Scale and the World Health Organization-Five (WHO-5) Well-Being Index.

RESULTS

Internal consistency was calculated from baseline data (N = 84) using Cronbach's alpha for the 5-item HERO composite = .93. The corrected item-total correlations were adequate (>.50), ranging from .67 (resilience) to .86 (mental wellness). The HERO Wellness Scale covers a representative sample of the domain of wellness. It diverges from WHO-5 items by specifically assessing for well-established positive psychology traits such as happiness, enthusiasm, resilience, and optimism.

CONCLUSIONS

The HERO Wellness Scale showed good validity and reliability, and should be considered for individual-level assessment of mental wellness. The HERO Wellness Scale adds to the body of knowledge in psychiatry, nursing, and psychology.