Community wellbeing: introduction

It is now widely acknowledged that there is more to health than simply the absence of illness. In recent years policy documents and other reports have highlighted the importance of wellbeing, moving away from a narrow definition of health towards one which includes social and emotional factors.

There is no accepted, universally used definition of community well-being or definitive set of community wellbeing indicators in use in Scotland but there have been a number of recent attempts to address this. In December 2007, NHS Health Scotland published a Core set of mental health indicators for adults in Scotland, which include a number of community indicators associated with mental health and wellbeing. These range from participation to community safety and are analysed in Scotland's mental health and its context: adults 2009, published in February 2009.  A wellbeing framework for Scotland was published in April 2008 by Forward Scotland and the Scottish Council Foundation.  An example of national accounts of well-being for the UK was published by NEF (The New Economics Foundation) in January 2009.