I'd like some advice picking a mood diary tracking app or online resource.
I want one that is easy to use, that can help me track the bipolar mood swings and will help me recognize when I'm getting to high or slipping into low mood.
I have an app called daylio - which is free.
You can track your mood everyday and your activities, as well as adding extra notes. They have 5 set moods - rad, good, meh, fugly and awful.
It displays a monthly mood chart, mood count and your activity count.
I find it easy to use and is helpful in tracking my low mood, though I'm really bad at keeping the app up to date.
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I use a thing called true colours. It has been designed by a bipolar research group although your answers don't get sent to them or anything. You can make personalised daily/weekly questions as well which is good.
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Screens to keep an eye out for depression and mania (to use myself)
Sorry for all the threads! I'm having a bit of a mad day with ideas and trying to keep well stemming for seeing my therapist for the first time in a month.
I want access to screens/questionnaires I can take to work out where my mood lies. Is there a legit/decent bipolar questionnaire that I can ta to find out if my mood is high low or normal?
I'd like something that is medically sound but that I can us at home to track my own mood and then, if it's high or low, contact my team where appropriate before I slip into an episode f mania or depression.
Hi J can you ask your therapist for some to track your mood at home? The lady I see gives me some PTSD questionnaires to track my symptoms between sessions. Would doing that be helpful ? X
she's not traind in my condition that's the only problem. And i ony see her once a month now as we're trialing that. So I'll hav to wait ages to ask her about it.But I will,thanks.
For now though, if anyone has anything that would be appreciated.
I use mood scope. It asks to rate 20 emotions/feelings on a scale of no/slightly to always and then gives you a score from 1-100.
I like it as it doesn't rely on me to know whether I am feeling low or high or whatever and I can spot which signs I'm getting of mood issues like high levels of guilt with low mood or irritability with low.
It gives you a bit a pep talk with your score which I quite like.
The downsides I have come across is that the pep talks seem only tailored for low moods so when my mood is high and I'm scoring highly the blurb is positive "yay your mood is good!" sorts of things but I have learnt what scores for me signal an elevated mood rather than a good mood.
It also wasn't that helpful when my mood had mixed features.
I tried a few sites before I found this one, it is a bit of trial and error before you find one that works for you. If I was looking for another site I would want one that gave me a numerical value at the end (I have turned the numbers I have from mood scope into weekly and monthly averages and the trends in my mood are much more obvious from these than they are from the daily score). A lot of the sites I tried before just recorded the mood I thought I was in which was fine when I was in an episode because it was obvious but I was totally missing early warning signs doing this. So for me I think it is important that my mood is rated based on my answers rather than my insight.
Some sites let you have trigger points that send out an email to a buddy list if you score certain levels of depression or high mood. It is not something I have used or looked into but this feature might be something else you want to look at when finding a mood recording site.
For low mood or anxiety I use the standard sheets my uni counselling team uses (PDQ9 or something like that)
For high moods, I use the young mania rating scale as that is what my psych used. Be wary this one is scales from no mania to severe mania so my elevated moods can score quite low on the scale (like 10 out of 60) whilst being disruptive for me. It is about learning what is not normal for you.
I would be wary of using the sheets too much, I tend to use them once I find that my mood scores are starting to show the possibility that I am in an episode. It is easy to start over thinking answers and becoming too familiar with the scoring system and get into a bit of a pickle. (this may be just me though!)
My student support gets me to answer depression and anxiety quizzes when I see him; it helps frame our sessions. Maybe this would be helpful for you when you see your therapist too?
Bipolar UK have some good resources. Might be worth checking out their website.
They also do groups and give a new comers pack with mood monitoring hand outs in them.
I go to them sometimes. If you find one you wanna go to let me know I could come along with you. X
The average,
well-adjusted adult
gets up at 7.30am feeling just plain terrible.
Call me Kate.
I have dyslexia so please excuse my poor spelling and sometimes poor understanding.
I use emoods it can even track your period and psychosis as well as high and low mood.
And I set it up so my phone asks me at 9 pm every night to do my mood score x
The average,
well-adjusted adult
gets up at 7.30am feeling just plain terrible.
Call me Kate.
I have dyslexia so please excuse my poor spelling and sometimes poor understanding.
I wasn't sure which of uou threads to put this in but keeping a mood diary over a period of time will really help you to see any patterns in your mood changes.
I find that it's ok to have a high or low mood but it's more if it lasts a certain amount of time for me or I start to lose insight that it is a problem.
Like mood changes will happen but I find having a trusted friend to clarify what is out of proportion helps too.
Monitoring your mood over a few moths though will help you see patterns and be able to track your early warning signs to reduce the next episode.
Cbt is also really good for bipolar. It helped me a lot and there is a really good book call "overcoming mood swings" with a lot of exercise in it that helped me realise what to do next and how to calm my moods and have more clarity over what is a mild, moderate or sever mood swing.
Also it's good for you to decide partly yourself when you would like help. Like I chose not to ask for help during hypomania or mild depression because I feel I can handle them on my own for a period of time.
It's different for each person.
Some people feel they need help sooner.
Doing a new crisis plan and care plan with your team may help you decide when help is needed.
It's a lot about learning what you can manage an what you can't. But that will come over a period of time with regular monitoring.
Hope that makes sense.
Tracking my mood is the best practice I've started for my mental health. I've learnt so much about my episodes. And now I'm building up the tools to manage even the bad ones.
Hugs x
The average,
well-adjusted adult
gets up at 7.30am feeling just plain terrible.
Call me Kate.
I have dyslexia so please excuse my poor spelling and sometimes poor understanding.
Bipolar uk have a mood scoring thing that rates your mood from 1-10 but it's fairly subjective
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