After taking a look at a few of the mood trackers that have long been available online, I was very unsatisfied with both how they asked you about your mood (”How depressed are you today?”) and the results they displayed (can we say “unhelpful”?). Mood trackers are used to help you track your emotional state on a daily or weekly basis, helping you get a better grasp on your emotions. Mood trackers can also help you determine your treatment’s effectiveness over time.
Like a screening quiz for depression or anxiety, you typically can’t just ask a person, “How depressed are you?” and get any kind of answer that you can hang your hat on. People aren’t always the best judge of their own mood states — especially when they are in the downward or upward swings of mania or depression.
So we formulated a different kind of mood tracker. Introducing the Psych Central Mood Tracker!
We take a different approach to mood. We ask you 12 simple questions that can help determine your current mood state for depression, mania and anxiety. It also determines whether you may be sleeping too little or too much, which can also contribute to one’s mood. You can also leave a brief journal note for your entry.
Then we tally your results and present you an attractive, immediately useful graph of your mood states over time. They are automatically saved to your Psych Central account, so you can keep track of how you’re getting better or worse in treatment or on your own. (A free Psych Central account is required in order to use the Mood Tracker.)
We hope you enjoy! Feel free to leave us feedback in the comments below.
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Links to This Article
Dealing With Sorrow (7/10/2009)
8 Comments to
“Introducing the Psych Central Mood Tracker”
i agree with you, some people even start to imagine things when they use such trackers
I love the psychcentral mood tracker. I was not happy with other trackers where I would have to guess how depressed/manic/anxious I was. Felt so childish and fake. I love the space to write a note, I use it to mention what happened during that day.
I have stuck with this one for about 3 weeks, and have already noticed a pattern in my mood cycle. I don’t think I would have noticed except for the graphs.
“Mood trackers are used to help you track your emotional state on a daily or weekly basis”
How about on an hourly basis 
?
I agree. There are plenty of days when I’ll feel fine for part of it but will feel deeply depressed the rest of the time so morning/afternoon/evening choices would be good.
Mood is like the weather isn’t it?
It partly depends on the thoughts we think right?
Wouldnt it be better to track the thoughts? Does that even matter? Maybe what would be better is to spend time plugging in positive affirmations–that way you program what you want your emotions to be. There is so much that contributes to mood–dips in mood or even irritability may be low blood sugar and a need to eat. Maybe depressed and drained mood may indicate dehydration and the need to drink. Don’t you think the times we are living in are tough on our mood stability? Seems like a realistic person would react with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations…. Oh well if it helps to track mood and one learns from it, this is good. Maybe one discovers they just need to sleep more hours….or refrain from associating with acidic people…. Seems like once you introduce a psyche med in the mix and then you try to diary log your mood to see how effective the med is–this seems to be a cat and mouse game…. What we need is God to take full control over earth’s affairs and rescue us from the deteriorating effects of sin. Until then we must endure these painful pestilences of mental illness.
What would be the benefit of tracking one’s moods?
Tracking one’s mood is often most helpful when one is in some sort of treatment for a mood-related concern, like depression or bipolar disorder. This way you can get a real-time indication of how effective treatment is or is not working for you.
If someone has called you “moody,” this may also help you better pin down the things in your life that help change your mood for better or worse.
How is the brain affected the intellect of the bipolar mind? Does the intelligence of the bipolar person change when symptoms of the disorder manifest themselves? After a bipolar person starts to take medication is their intelligence affected?
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 17 Jun 2009
