Thursday, July 28, 2011

A Helpful, Free Online Tool

Hi everyone! I recently found a cool online tool that I've been using. This could be very helpful for anyone who is dealing with a disorder that affects their mood, especially if they are trying out new medications.
The site is called Mood Tracker, and its free. The concept is pretty simple... each day, you can log on and track what your mood was for the day.  You can also mark whether you took your medication, how many hours of sleep you got, whether you followed your exercise routine. The system will then track the information. You can choose to view graphs of your moods... and you can even print out the graphs and journal entries to share with your doctor or counselor.
Some other perks of the system? You can sign up for support alerts. These are alerts that will email or text you, or another person who you indicate. For instance, you can get a text message or email sent to you each day when it is time to take your medication, or you can ask for a "help" alert to be sent to a certain person whenever your mood hits a certain level.
You can also have your caregiver (which I guess would usually be a doctor or therapist, although I doubt any doctor I went to would be willing to take that time) sign up for Moodtracker and have access to your mood tracking. They can then keep track of what is going on with you. (If they didn't want to do all that, you could still just print out your mood charts and bring them to the caregiver!)
There is even a forum where you can talk to other users.
This service is free. You can also choose, for about $25 a year, to have a subscription. This would get you a few extra features, including pie charts of your moods, the option to track your exercise records, space to record significant events in your mood tracker, and no ads on the site.
I think it is pretty cool, and I've been using it for a while! I also think it will be handy when I start taking meds for the study I'm going to be in, to be able to keep track of my mood from day to day and have tangible evidence of whether the meds are working.
Check it out! www.moodtracker.com.
If you have any other helpful sites to share, please let me know!

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