• Mood Tracking Apps and Websites

    November 10, 2013 Author: NuttyLizzy
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    I’ve been using an online mood tracker (www.moodtracker.com) since my diagnosis. I tried all the apps listed below, but found the web based versions to be more thorough. What it will do for you at the very least is verify whether you are doing well or not. This comes in handy when control freak boyfriends try to tell you that they think the medication is actually making you worse and they would quit taking it if they were you. Yeah, that’s a great idea! Anyway, mood tracking software will keep track of sleep patterns, anxiety levels, exercise routines, alcohol consumption, moods spikes, drops and mixed states. Some of them also have a journal section where you can dig into other reasons why there may have been a shift. For example there’s a spike in your mood then a major drop on the 16th and the journal reads, just totaled the car, dumped my fiance, and quit my job… Below is the first and second quarter for myself. The red section is “not medicated” and the changes in background (pink/grey) are the dosage increases.

    Screen shot 2013-11-10 at 11.29.49 AMScreen shot 2013-11-10 at 11.30.30 AM

    iCharting: Web, Desktop and Phone Applications for Mood Tracking
    updated August, 2013

    Okay, okay: now there are bunch of these programs (why did it take so long?).  I can’t even keep up anymore. Here are three that seem to have what you might want. The research tool I’ve tried myself.  The other two seem so simple or well worked out, they’ve made the list here, but there are more out there I’ve not examined. Options 2 and 3 are available for both iPhone and Android.

    1. Suppose all you wanted to do was rate your mood every day (not sleep, exercise, or anxiety). That might make it so simple you’d actually do it most of the time!  For that, there’s a free simple clean program, web or iPhone (Android “coming soon”, as of 9/2012, but they have been saying that for a while…).MoodPanda.

    2. If you want to chart mood and sleep and anxiety, and have your fully private results support a research effort (with daily reminders to chart, which is nice if you need it and can be turned off if you don’t) , you want BeatingBipolar.  They have iPhone and Android versions.  You can have your medical provider look at your chart in advance of a visit by sending your log-in info.

    3. However, if you want a full program that’s been revised for several years, now very slick, that may be the Optimism program (desktop/laptop, or handheld, Apple or Windows). This is a commercial grade product. I don’t know how they are managing to offer this for free (maybe because they’re marketing it for clinicians?).

    THE ABSOLUTE ULTIMATE BEST: This is not available quite yet (as of August, 2013), but there is an Android program which not only allows you to enter your own data but also uses your Android to summarize the frequency of your phone calls, texts, and exercise ( and even just how much you move around on average). The research team developing it has published a description of this program and how they are testing itKessing; the short version of that report is that they definitely have this working and it is probably the ultimate mood/energy tracking system.  It should be only a matter of time before this system, which gathers much more objective data about what is really going on, is available commercially.

    * Credit to James Phelps, MD. PsychEducation.org

  • Totaled Car / Totaled Mind?

    September 27, 2013 Author: NuttyLizzy
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    I am amazed at how treatable bipolar really is. I’m not on much medication, but the effects are huge. My car is totaled, and I feel okay. I feel very calm. Of course when they gave me the news I did start laughing and crying at the same time (a little minor hysteria) and I didn’t get much sleep last night, but there was no throwing things (okay, some swearing). Is it all because of two pills a day?

    I remember a time not long ago, before I was diagnosed, where I really thought that throwing things helped. It didn’t. I’ve lost a lot of nice things as a result and have some holes in the walls that I still have to patch. Of course, those serve as a reminder.

    There was this one particular time, when I think I realized that there was something really wrong with my mind. I was being pushed, verbally, by my boyfriend at the time. He really liked to do that. It was nothing nasty, but fucking relentless! On and On and On he went about me and my problems and how they created all of our problems. I kept telling him to just stop, but of course he didn’t, so I got up and went into the bathroom, shut the door and started screaming “Leave me alone. Just leave me alone!!!” I had passed the meltdown stage.

    He kept talking to me through the door, so I opened it and yanked something off the wall and threw it. It wasn’t enough. I then grabbed a framed photograph that I took of a flower that was hanging on the wall of the bathroom. It was a close up of a thistle. By now things were moving in slow motion for me and it was quite surreal. I smashed the photograph on the floor as hard as I could. I watched the glass shatter into hundreds of tiny pieces and ripple across the hardwood floor. It was so… beautiful. Like skiing on corn snow and watching it rush down the mountain in front of you, or dropping a small pebble into a still pond. I looked up at my now very alarmed boyfriend and pointed to the glass and said, “That is what my mind is like”.

    Last night I was reading to my son and he says, “Well it sucks the car is dead”. I normally wouldn’t like that kind of talk coming from him, but I tolerated it in this situation. “At least I didn’t throw anything”, I said back.  He remembered a time when I foolishly got mad at my iPhone and broke it because I couldn’t get a signal or something. I had to buy a new one. Stupid. So he says to me “Yeah, you don’t do that anymore”. I told him there was a reason for that and I would explain it to him sometime. It was a good affirmation that he could see the difference in me. I have been waiting for that.