What is Mood Charting, and why do we think it’s so important?
In simple terms, mood charting is making notes, either on paper or electronically, about what your mood is at about the same time each day. The chart can include other data points, such as hours of sleep, or type and duration of exercise, but the main idea is to have an objective record of what’s going on in your life.
If we’re honest, we all know that human memory is not good enough for data collection. Patients frequently tell us “the medication isn’t doing any good” “nothing has changed” or “I tried that and it didn’t work”. But when they start keeping careful track, a task that takes only minutes each day, they find that their memory is not accurate, and change can be documented, or new patterns can emerge.
Mood charting is an important tool for your physician or therapist as well, because they can get data that indicate which treatments are working and which may need to be tweaked. Prescribing treatment is a complex job, and you can’t always assume that your doctor got it right the first time. Particularly in complex cases, where anxiety, PTSD, or other disorders may co-occur, mood charting over a period of weeks or months can help identify correlations and even causes and effects in a way that isn’t always obvious on the surface.
How to do it?
“Old school” methods like posting a sheet of paper on the refrigerator still work, but more and more people nowadays are using cell phone apps.
We have recently become aware of a new app that holds a great deal of promise. It uses a scheme very similar to the mood charts we have been using, so it can be easily adapted for use in our practice.
The How We Feel app is the first one we’ve seen that includes the alternatives High Energy-Low Energy and Pleasant-Unpleasant, which we find useful and meaningful for patients. It is available for download on both the Google and Apple app stores. The free version is fine but the paid version includes some very helpful coaching and AI based analysis of mood.
This picture shows how that system for describing mood works. On the left side of the picture is “unpleasant” and on the right is “pleasant.” Down on the picture is “slow” and up is “quick.” You end up with four quadrants. The orange / red quadrant reflects a mixed mood state: quick, perhaps racing thoughts, but unpleasant (irritated or agitated). The yellow quadrant is a pure energized state, ranging from hyperthymic to hypomanic or manic. The blue quadrant is depressed and slowed down. The green quadrant is a peaceful state that for most people is not common.
MS posts re: Mood Charting: