I recently discovered a wonderful tool for helping people with depression and bipolar disorders track their mood and recovery. It’s called Mood Tracker (found at http://www.moodtracker.com) and anyone with an email address can sign up for a free account that provides you with access to some great features. It seems to have been designed with the intention of helping people taking medication for depression and bipolar disorders by providing them and their care providers with a graphic mood chart that tracks hours of sleep, daily mood, and medication taken. Over time, such a chart would be very helpful in fine tuning medication dosage. For those living with bipolar disorder, this website can be used to notify caregivers, family and friends of a manic episode.
Here’s how it works:
If you desire a reminder, Moodtracker will email you at the same time every day to remind you to log your mood, medication and hours of sleep. When you log in you enter a new a new mood record for that day. This includes the mood that was most prevalent throughout the day, as well as the opportunity to record a second mood you might have noticed during the day. You record the level of anxiety you experienced, if any, and enter the level of irritability you experienced. You are also asked to enter the hours you slept the night before, whether you’ve taken your medication and, if you’re a woman, if you are currently menstruating. There’s also a journal space for each day so you can write down anything related to your mood or experience that you feel is important to track. (Some examples might be: noticing if you enjoyed anything that day and what it was; if there was a particular theme to your thoughts; if there was a crisis and what preceded it; and what kind of exercise you did that day.)
The website also allows you to enter what medications you’re currently taking, how much and how often. This information, along with the information you entered for the mood record, is automatically charted and can be viewed graphically. This allows you (and any caregiver you allow to access your account) to view shifts in your moods over a period of time. Your journal entries are catalogued separately and can be kept private in case you do not wish to share them with your caregiver.
While this website was intended for people taking medication, I strongly believe it could be an important tool for any one with a mood disorder seeking to track changes over a period of time. Even someone who is making major changes in their diet, exercise and sleep patterns might want to see how it effects their mood over a long period of time.
The most exciting thing about having a simple tool to help you track your mood is, I believe, that it gives you the opportunity to see how your mood shifts over time. This gives you power to become more of an active participant in your treatment. If what you see is a consistently depressed mood, or high levels of anxiety, you can take that information to your caregiver and request a change in your treatment. If you’ve been depressed for a long time and start tracking your mood as you begin a new treatment, you can watch as your mood begins to shift and become more frequently elevated.
