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OK, you’ve sold me as to why I should track my mood (part 1); so just how do I track my mood?
Obviously, the simplest form of mood tracking is just recording depression and mania on a scale, say, of one-to-ten. You could use a “paper” and “pencil” (look it up on Wikipedia).
You might still notice mood trends but that type of mood tracking is not nearly as helpful as it could be. And the more complicated your case, the more you already know, the more subtle your shifts may be and the less you’ll see using simple methods.
There are far more useful, not to mention easier, options.
Ideally, you’d like to track more variables than just depression and mania. Additional good variables for people with a mental illness to include when tracking mood include:
(Don’t worry; I still do it in 60 seconds or less.)
Even Better Mood TrackingAnd even better than just tracking the above variables of mood, environment and lifestyle, it would be great if you could track multiple scales per mood. For example, instead of rating depression on a scale of one-to-ten, rate sadness, fatigue and concentration, then use those variables to calculate a depression rating.
Don’t be scared – there’s an app for that. (Other options at the bottom.)
Not surprisingly, the easiest way to track your mood is using a computer. Specifically a smart phone, because you have a cell phone within arm’s reach of you all day and you need to take a break from playing Angry Birds sometime.
Here’s the one I like;^ it’s free and available for both iPhone and Android phones: T2 Mood Tracker by the National Center for Telehealth and Technology.*
This mood tracking / mood charting program is great because it does everything I think is important:
As I said, your mood isn’t one thing. You aren’t just depressed. You’re depressed with a hint of anxiety and a soupçon of stress thrown in.
The T2 Mood Tracker has these moods / variables built-in:
I have head injury and posttraumatic stress turned off as they don’t apply to me. I think the other four are good for everyone. I have also added scales** for:
Your list might be slightly different but I think the above are worth tracking for everyone. (Details on my custom mood variables here.)
It’s easy. Each day you open the app and click on each mood / variable. Within each mood are ten pairs of emotions to consider. For example, anxiety has:
Anxious – PeacefulAll you do is place yourself along a scale from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other for each pair. The app does all the calculating behind the scenes.
This may seem like a lot, but the idea isn’t to spend five minutes pondering each pair, the idea is to rate yourself by gut reaction. Between all ten pairs, you’re going to get a more accurate reading than you ever would just rating anxiety, one-to-ten.
I would say I spend about one second per pair.
The Mood Tracker Graphs the Moods for You, Which is EssentialYou can then see the mood chart / graph containing all the moods and drill down to see the pair data for specific moods if you like. Graphs are how you can see trends because the data for any given day is of limited use, but the data for a month is what matters.
You can also add notes each day for anything the mood data doesn’t capture. For example, medication changes or major life events that may affect your ratings.
I understand your feelings. I’m a rapid-cycler. I used to agree with this. But that’s because I wasn’t tracking enough data. I was using an old-fashioned spreadsheet and it just didn’t track enough for me to see meaningful trends. But this does.
I can honestly say, where other mood tracking has failed, this app has succeeded. I’ve learned new things about my mood during the first three weeks of use.
Completely understandable. We’re busy people and you’re right, if you don’t use it every day, it doesn’t work as well as it could. Luckily for you, the T2 Mood Tracker allows for reminders that pop up on your phone – three times a day if you like.
The T2 Mood Tracker Isn’t PerfectThis isn’t a perfect app; it doesn’t do everything I would want it to and the graph is really ugly. But for its shortcomings, it’s well worth at least giving it a shot. After the first two days, you’ll find it easy and fast, I promise.
I have learned about the relationship between sleep and physical symptoms – a correlate far stronger than I ever recognized. I have learned my own propensity for a correlation between stress, anxiety and depression – again, more correlated than I ever recognized. And a few other things.
And the mood trending is so clear it practically smacks me across the face. This is very useful for both you and your doctor.
————————————————————————————————————————–
There are many other apps out there, this is simply the best free app I’ve seen. Feel free to suggest others below.
Sorry about that. I have a suggestion for you.
^ I was not in any way compensated for this article. This isn’t an ad, just an opinion.
* Interestingly, T2 is a component center of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE); so the app was actually built with veterans in mind. Other health apps they offer.
** In settings you can turn off/on rating categories and add custom ones. See the help file for more details.
Natasha Tracy is an award-winning writer, speaker, advocate, and consultant from the Pacific Northwest. She has been living with bipolar disorder for 26 years and has written more than 2000 articles on the subject.
Find more of Natasha’s work in her acclaimed book: "Lost Marbles: Insights into My Life with Depression & Bipolar" on Amazon.
Connect with Natasha at the social media links below.
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Honestly, I use a private twitter to tweet blurbs about my mood and thought processes and it’s probably the mood tracker I’ve stuck with the longest and didn’t either get horribly boring or something I would just forget about. It helps that I’m following some trusted friends and internet personalities so it’s not just an empty feed.
I use emoods. I havent tried the others. I like it because it makes a pretty, easy to read chart I can mail my doctor every week
Just found your site via a saved article I’d kept on facebook via a friend of mine. I got diagnosed in april of this year and have struggled with it a bit, with the meds the diagnosis, everything really, so am glad to have found your site already because while I’ve been told to keep track of my moods on sheets I find it hard to remember and now pretty sure I’ve lost the sheets, then I get resentful and blah blah! I didn’t realise that I could have an app on my phone, strangely didn’t even occur to me to look – so thank you am going to give it a try.
I use eMoods…as a way to make him more aware of my moods, he asked my husband to track me as well. My husband never remembered, so my psychiatrist joked he was going to have my son do it. I thought it was silly sinew he was only 8 at the time, but you know what? My son usually picks up my mixed manic moods days before I do. And the doctor compares both graphs we send him every week (ok, probably his nurse does, unless something is off), and except for a few days he said I was irritable when he was just in trouble, having someone else track my moods with me has been really benificial
I use moodtracker.com, and I like it. My psychiatrist thinks I’m amazing. I think it’s bare minimum and keep asking what I can do better and she tells me it’s great as it is.
I like how it’s simple enough for even me to use.
I used T2 and I liked it, but I use a tablet, not a smartphone, so it was a bit hard to get the info off and to remember to use it regularly because it wasn’t in my pocket.
The most comprehensive solution I have found is bstable. I use it with my dr regularly as the flexible reports are key to identifying trends in what is working and what is not.
http://Www.bstable. com
I am SO beyond grateful to have found your blog. Seriously. And the suggestion of mood tracking via my cell phone is genius! I was recently diagnosed with Bi-polar II… like within the past month. Up to this point it was 10+ years of being told it was just depression, just anxiety, i’m borderline, it’s this… it’s that…. AHHHH!!! I was so fed up being diagnosed. Then finally my nurse practitioner suggested a test for me to take, along with advice from my dad who is also a Psych mental health nurse practitioner that I may be bi-polar. Not so much on the manic side, more depressive. And I’ve been wondering why, despite the fact that I was on several anti-depressants I didn’t really feel much of anything. I was still crying all the time. Tearing up at a moments notice. Irritable so quickly, not needing sleep… etc. Finally with the correct diagnoses and starting a new med I am finally feeling a bit better. Still not at the therapeutic level on my meds, but we’ll be getting there soon. I am eternally grateful for your openess and candor at sharing your story and thoughts from the heart. I find you extremely inspirational and always find good, practical, real-life advice here, and it gives me a place where I don’t feel like a freak. I will be using technology to my advantage and tracking my moods from here on out.
Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.
– Midori
I use bStable from McGraw Systems as a disease state management system for symptom monitoring with my patients across the bipolar spectrum.
There is an app that allows multiple entries per day and graphs the line for you but it is not bipolar-specific. The logo for it is a smiley yellow star and I think the app is called “moodtrak” but I am not sure. You can use your own keywords for your mood and it colour-codes your moods too. Below the line graph the words you used are written and the ones you used more times that week or whatever are bigger, so you get a sort of “mode average” overview. It also has a social element which I never really used. This app could really work for those who are new to mood-tracking or who want to use it in conjunction with other apps.
For those who want mood tracking to be as quick and painless as possible I recommend Bipol-App on Android. You use sliding scales for sleep, anxiety, mood and energy. I used to use it a lot and the graph it plots shows each variable as a line of a different colour so you can see the correlations. I don’t use it anymore because I have found that my mood changes throughout the day. I use good old-fashioned pen and paper. I have colour-coded my moods and use this alongside keywords, a one to five rating and short descriptions of how I feel and what I have been doing. I dedicate a great deal of time to charting my mood. To be honest I think it is the best way you can empower yourself and begin to understand, predict and even change your moods.
Hi Natasha Tracy…Just wanted to say a big THANKS for your review on T2 Mood Tracker. Thought I’d give you a little heads up that T2 Mood Tracker 3.0 will be announced shortly…within the next month. We’ve added a ton of functionality to it and greatly improved the graphing portion (which I know you didn’t love =) Watch for the public release or visit t2health.org. It should be out by the end of September. Thanks again for spreading the word! Btw…we also have a ton of other helpful apps as well!
Hi Carrie,
Thanks for the heads-up. Many people have started using your app based on this piece (and have let me know) and I know they’ll be interested in a new version. If the differences are significant enough, I’ll try to review that one too.
– Natasha Tracy
Thanks for your WONDERFULLY informative site. My husband is bipolar 2. Do you know how T2 does at tracking multiple entries per day? He seems to go back and forth between ultra-rapid & ultradian (another term I thank you for teaching us), and I was thinking of fixing him up with a simple mood tracker which would prompt him every couple hours so we could start to see patterns.
T2 definitely looks thorough, but just from my testing, it looks like multiple submissions in a day are simply averaged, rather than showing the changes over time.
FWIW, I’ve been looking at other online/Android tools. giraph.com is another promising site for tracking. You can customize your own set of questions, set reminders up to N times per hour, and it has a mobile app.
I somewhat like the questions on moodlytics.com (I am feeling ___ for how long ___), but only the most rudimentary features are free and it doesn’t seem worth paying for.
After looking at a lot of trackers online, I may just build a custom one from Google Forms…
Anyway, thanks for your site.
Hi LR,
Well, you’re welcome for the information and the site :)
I’m sorry but T2 doesn’t allow multiple entries per day. You’re not the first one who has asked me about that feature but I don’t know of anything that does that. While I hear from a lot of ultradian folks, I think it’s “rare” clinically and so no one has made an app to address it. If I were the app-building type I’d make one, but I just don’t have the time.
Thanks for the information on the other sites. I’ve seen a few too and some of them aren’t bad but none of them are multiple times per day (which I agree would be helpful.)
– Natasha Tracy
A new nice app for iPhone, helps tracking mood changes – http://itunes.apple.com/app/imoodjournal-mood-journal/id517952128?mt=8
Hi. I found this site thru google. I have an Android. I like the T2 program except I’d like to track my meds as well. Any suggestions?
I am searching for a tool to track my mood but also my meds. I have an Android. Is there a companion tool to track my meds? I found another mood app but it requires me to enter my meds individually every day and that’s hard.
Hi Sue,
I haven’t used it personally, but try eMoods. I know it’s for Android and has a med tracker.
– Natasha Tracy
I think this thing is a great little app. I just can’t seem to figure out how to set things up to get a graph that makes sense. I guess one problem I have is terminology and which end to put the words on (desirable, undesirable) For example a rating might be “talkative” which I find undesirable. The desirable, then is “not.” The line looks kind of whacky as a result. I can don’t understand what the effect of turning the “is description” button on for a scale is either.
Hi Dave,
I would say that if your undesirable is “talkative” your desirable would just be “average” or “normal” and then you would have another one where the undesirable is “not talkative” and “normal.” That would make sense for your graph.
Secondly, do you mean the “is positive description” flag? That just means the label you’re choosing is the positive descriptor of the scale and not the negative one.
Hope that helps.
– Natasha Tracy
Also checkout http://www.moodtrak.com, which lets you track and rate your mods online and also update your mood by text message
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for the like although I’m partial to offline solutions. More control over your own data.
– Natasha Tracy
It’s not free but I tried this one…
http://www.findingoptimism.com/
Hi Sansanity,
I took a look at the software, and while I can’t claim to like it due to it’s rather nutty complexity, I did want to mention the iPhone version is now free for anyone interested in taking a look. (You can get it from the App Store or from the link.)
And I rather dislike that you need a login to use it. All these companies want to control your data.
– Natasha
I have been using this app since you wrote about it and it really is effective. I am and it is early mind you beginning to see patterns in my mood. Especially surrounding sleeplessness and anxiety. I am also using the app to work on my emotional reactiveness to some success.
Hi Steven,
That is so great! I know you’ve been having a hard time and every little bit helps. I was surprised to see patterns so clearly after so many years experience with bipolar. Just when I think I know “everything” I learn that I don’t.
Did you put in your own custom variables? The ones I suggested or others?
Well, do let me know if you find it helpful in the long-run.
Thanks for the feedback.
– Natasha Tracy
For me I have three different, distinct issues with sleep. The three are: I have trouble falling asleep, I fall asleep fine but then wake up at 2 or 3 am, or I fall asleep but then have such strong, vivid, realistic dreams all night that I wake up still feeling totally exhausted. And occasionally there will be a combination of these things. So for me to realize the exact sleep issues helps, because then I can take medication based on that. Like klonopin eases my mind enough to fall asleep, but if I’m tired and just making up in the wee hours, then taking trazadone helps me stay asleep all night. A mixture of the two, and possibly an increase or change in my anti-psychotic, for the dreams. So I can see how scales of different things can help see a clearer picture of the real issue.
You’ve hit the nail on the head there Hannah. We all have issues like that. And perhaps you’ll find, if you measure all three there will be a pattern of which you are currently unaware. I was surprised to some some patterns in me.
– Natasha Tracy
Very curious of your scales for sleep, hypomania, physical symptoms (not really exercise but I’ll go a head and ask that too).
Nice tip :)
Hi Leslie,
Yes, I thought someone might ask. Maybe I’ll put up a short addendum post that lists them for you. I’ll try and get that one up later today.
(I’m not saying my custom scales are perfect, but they would be a starting point for anyone interested.)
– Natasha Tracy
That’s wonderful and exactly what I’d find useful… a launching point. I’m pre diagnosis and I know the more concrete info I can gather about myself the easier I’ll get to understand myself and MOVE FORWARD :) Really excited for that last bit.
As requested, here is my follow-up post with custom mood variable details: https://staging.natashatracy.com/bipolar-disorder/custom-bipolar-scales-t2-mood-tracker/
– Natasha Tracy