Question:
Three years ago I kept a mood chart for about 9 months while I was going on
an anti-depressant for the first time. It has been a real help lately, as I have gone back on the a-d and wanted to
know how I responded to this drug before. Keeping a mood chart has also
been helpful now because I don't just track negative moods (mania,
depression), I also track positive moods and other mood-illness-related
emotions (such as anxiety and anger). By keeping track of my moods, it
helps me to become more aware of how I am feeling (which is a problem for
me), and to watch trends. With excel I can create bar charts, graphs, and
look at correlations between variables, like whether or not the amount of
time I sleep is correlated with my energy level. It is a GREAT help in
talking with my psychiatrist. I was wondering if anyone else out there keeps a mood chart, and if so what
you keep track of.
Answer:
In making mine I tracked down all of the bipolar mood charts that I could
find to design my own, and I encourage people to customize their own mood
chart to fit their own needs. (I have had a long off-line conversation with
someone trying to come up with a mood chart for rapid-cycling). Recently I
have added a section about "caretaking behavior" which tracks those
behaviors that fall by the way-side when I stop taking care of myself (diet,
taking a shower, spending time socializing) to come up with an overall
"caregiving" variable which tells me in behavioral terms whether or not I am
getting better.
How do other people think of "depression"? In coming up with an overall
index of my depression, I averaged three different variables,
Depressed mood
Lack of energy
Difficulty thinking
which describes how I look at bipolar depression. Anyone else have other
ways that they think of "bipolar depression"? I would add a mood chart created at Hah-vard by Gary Sachs, that includes
space for the various medications someone is taking, plus a visual chart of
their moods, at
http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/depts/allpsych/bipolar/moodchart.html
Someone has taken the time to put this Sachs chart, which is in a
difficult-to-read .gif file into a word file that you can download at
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/pmbrig/mood_chart_dl.html
A much simpler mood chart for bipolars:
http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Bipolar/jinnah/solutions/Page....
html
