Mental Well-being Impact Assessment (MWIA)

Mental Well-being Impact Assessment (MWIA) uses a combination of methods, procedures and tools to assess the potential for a policy, service, programme or project (hereafter referred to as proposals) to impact on the mental well-being of a population. MWIA makes evidence based recommendations to strengthen the positive and mitigate against the negative impacts, and encourages a process to develop indicators to measure impacts.

MWIA theory and practice has been developed by a partnership in England who have been developing MWIA as a practice, and has produced a toolkit to support the process.

MWIA is similar to Health Impact Assessment (HIA) except that it has a specific focus on mental health and well-being. The aim of MWIA is to maximize positive and mitigate negative impacts on mental health and well-being. Like HIA, MWIA focuses on population groups who may experience health inequalities and social injustice with a particular emphasis on those most at risk of poorer mental well-being. It also makes the link with social determinants, and can be adapted to be used alongside HIA or as a separate process. MWIA goes further in developing indicators to measure the actual impacts over time.