Mental Health Survey Questions: Examples and How to Write Them

What makes a good mental health survey question

The difference between a question that gets a real answer and one that gets a polite non-answer usually comes down to wording. A few rules do most of the work. Ask about one thing at a time.

“Do you feel supported by your manager and your team?” cannot be answered by someone who feels supported by one and not the other.

Split it. Put a time frame on it.

“Do you feel stressed?” invites people to answer about their life in general.

“In the last month, how often has your workload felt unmanageable?” gives you something you can compare next quarter.

Ask about circumstances, not symptoms. You are not trying to find out how someone is doing clinically. You are trying to find out whether the environment you control is helping or hurting.

Keep the language plain and neutral. Avoid clinical vocabulary, and avoid words that carry judgement. In short, a question earns its place if it is specific, time-bound, answerable in a couple of seconds, and about something you could actually change:

• One idea per question, never two.
• A stated time frame, so answers are comparable.
• Plain words instead of clinical ones.
• Neutral phrasing that does not hint at a “right” answer.
• Something within your power to fix.

Mental health survey questions for employees

Workplace wellbeing surveys work best when they stay close to the things an employer actually controls: workload, manager support, boundaries, and whether people know how to get help. These are examples to adapt rather than a fixed instrument.

• In the last month, how often has your workload felt manageable?
• Do you feel able to take time off when you need it?
• How comfortable would you be telling your manager you were struggling?
• Do you know where to find mental health support through work?
• How often do you finish the working day feeling drained?
• Are you able to switch off from work outside your working hours?
• Does your team talk openly about wellbeing?
• Do you feel your workload is shared fairly across the team?

Notice what these have in common. Not one of them asks how someone is. They ask about conditions — hours, boundaries, manager relationships, whether help is findable.

Those are answerable without disclosing anything private, and every one of them points at something a business can act on.

Mental health survey questions for students

For schools, colleges and universities the same principle applies, with the pressures swapped out. Academic load, belonging, sleep and knowing where to turn are the areas a school can influence.

• How often do you feel able to keep up with your workload?
• Do you feel like you belong here?
• Is there an adult or staff member you would go to if you were struggling?
• How often do you get enough sleep during term time?
• Do you know what support is available to you on campus?
• How comfortable would you be asking for an extension if you were overwhelmed?
• Do you feel comfortable talking about mental health with other students?

For younger students, shorten the scale and simplify the wording. A five-face scale usually reads better than words for anyone under about eleven, and the fewer questions you ask, the more of them get answered.

How to word questions so people answer honestly

The wording matters, but the conditions around the survey matter more. People give guarded answers when they think an answer can be traced back to them, or when they cannot see what it is for. Make it genuinely anonymous, and say so plainly at the start.

If responses are tied to a team small enough that an individual could be identified, people know it, and they answer accordingly. Do not ask for a diagnosis. Questions like “have you ever been diagnosed with a mental health condition?” invite people to disclose something they have no reason to share with an employer or a school, and the answer will not change what you do next.

Keep it short. Wellbeing surveys have a strong tendency to sprawl, and every extra question costs you completed responses from exactly the people whose answers you most need. Say what happens next.

People answer more honestly when they believe something will come of it, and they stop answering entirely after a survey that visibly changed nothing.

Choosing a rating scale

Frequency scales tend to outperform agreement scales for wellbeing questions.

“Never, rarely, sometimes, often, always” is easier to answer accurately than “strongly disagree to strongly agree,” because people are being asked to recall how often something happened rather than to rate a statement about themselves.

Five points is usually the right length. Eleven-point scales invite people to overthink, and three points are too blunt to show movement between surveys. Whatever you pick, keep it identical across every question and every survey round, or you lose the ability to compare.

We go deeper on scale wording in our guide to survey rating scales.

What a wellbeing survey should not try to do

This is the part most guides leave out, and it is the most important one. A survey measures a group. It does not assess an individual.

Screening for depression, anxiety or risk of self-harm is done with validated clinical instruments, administered and interpreted by qualified professionals, in a setting where someone can respond to what they find. Copying those items into an anonymous staff survey does not give you a screening programme. It gives you data you are not qualified to interpret and cannot act on, gathered from someone you cannot identify.

So do not include crisis or self-harm questions in a general wellbeing survey. If you want that capability, it belongs with your occupational health provider, employee assistance programme or student counselling service — not in a feedback tool. What you should include is a visible route to help.

Put support contacts on the survey itself and on the completion screen, so that anyone the questions bring something up for has somewhere to go immediately, whether or not they finish. And never make wellbeing responses identifiable, or use them in any individual assessment. Doing so is both a serious breach of trust and, in most jurisdictions, a legal problem.

Running the survey and acting on the results

Ask often and briefly rather than rarely and exhaustively. A short pulse every quarter shows you movement; one long annual survey shows you a snapshot that is already out of date by the time it is analysed. Make responding effortless and put the ask where people already are.

A tap on a kiosk in a break room, a single question in an email signature, or a QR code on a noticeboard all get answered by people who would never open a survey link at home. Then report back. Publish what the results showed and what you are changing because of them, even when the answer is that you cannot change something yet.

That single step does more for your next response rate than any amount of question tuning.

Frequently asked questions

What questions should you ask in a mental health survey?

Ask about the conditions you control rather than how someone is feeling in general: workload, hours, boundaries, manager or staff support, and whether people know where to find help. Keep each question to a single idea, give it a clear time frame such as “in the last month,” and use plain language rather than clinical terms.

What are 5 good questions for a mental health survey?

A short workplace survey can work with just five.

• In the last month, how often has your workload felt manageable?
• Do you feel able to take time off when you need it?
• How comfortable would you be telling your manager you were struggling?
• Do you know where to find mental health support through work?
• Are you able to switch off outside working hours?

Those five cover load, boundaries, psychological safety and access to help.

How many questions should a mental health survey have?

Fewer than you think. Five to eight questions with one optional comment box will finish at a far higher rate than a twenty-question survey, and the people most under pressure are the ones most likely to abandon a long one — which biases your results in exactly the wrong direction.

Should a mental health survey be anonymous?

Yes, and it should be visibly anonymous. State plainly what is and is not collected before the first question. Be careful with demographic filters too: enough of them combined can identify someone in a small team, and if people suspect that is possible they will answer cautiously or not at all.

Ask the question where people actually are

The best-written question in the world still needs someone to answer it. SurveyStance captures short, anonymous wellbeing check-ins at the point people are already standing — Feedback Kiosks in break rooms, staff rooms and common areas, One-Click Feedback in an email signature, and QR code surveys for noticeboards — then summarises the comments so a small team can see what is emerging without reading every response.

See how it works, or talk to us about running a wellbeing pulse across your locations.