Track daily mood on a depression-euthymia-hypomania/mania scale alongside sleep, medication, and key events.
Rate your mood daily on a scale from -5 (severely depressed) through 0 (euthymic/stable) to +5 (severely manic). Also record hours slept and any significant events. This builds a picture of your mood pattern over time.
Use throughout therapy and as a long-term self-management tool. Daily mood monitoring helps identify patterns, triggers, and early warning signs. Particularly valuable in the early stages of therapy for establishing baseline mood variability and ongoing for relapse detection.
Explain that tracking mood daily provides data to identify patterns that are hard to see in the moment. Use a simple scale (e.g., -5 to +5 or a visual analogue scale) that captures both depressive and elevated mood states. Include sleep, medication, and key events alongside mood.
For clients who find daily monitoring burdensome, reduce to twice-weekly or use a simple app. For those who tend to minimise mood changes, anchor the scale with specific behavioural descriptors at each point. For clients in acute episodes, monitoring may need to be simplified or supported by a carer.
If mood monitoring increases rumination or mood-congruent cognitive processing (e.g., the client dwells on low mood while recording it), discuss this openly and consider adjusting the approach. Some clients benefit from monitoring behaviour rather than mood directly.
Review the mood diary in session and look for patterns with the client. Common patterns include mood fluctuations linked to sleep disruption, social rhythm changes, interpersonal conflict, or medication non-adherence. Use the data to validate the client's experience and to refine the formulation over time.
Suitable for clients working with bipolar, mood diary, cbt, mood monitoring, sleep, euthymia, mania, depression. This tool can be used as a standalone worksheet or as part of a structured homework plan.
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Identify personal early warning signs for both depression and mania/hypomania, and create a stepped action plan for each mood polarity.
Track daily routine stability — wake time, meals, activity, social contact, and bedtime — as routine disruption is a key trigger for mood episodes.
A longitudinal formulation for bipolar disorder — mapping life events, episode patterns, and maintaining factors across time.
Identify and challenge positive beliefs about mania/hypomania that reduce motivation for relapse prevention — e.g. "I'm more creative when high."