How to Use Daily Mood Charts in Your Practice
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Looking for daily mood charts to share with clients in session? This article contains a free, downloadable and printable mood tracker PDF.
Read on for a comprehensive overview of daily mood charts, their benefits, ways to use them with clients, and a helpful mood tracker PDF to save to your electronic health record (EHR) for therapists for future use.
Benefits of using a daily mood chart
One of the key roles of a therapist is supporting clients in understanding the connection between their environment and its impact on their thoughts and feelings. And, one effective way to achieve this is through using a daily mood chart, which is a core tool of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
Daily mood charts are used to simply keep track of an individual’s mood.
These charts can assist the client and therapist in better understanding the impact of their environment on their emotions, automatic thoughts, and behavior—also referred to as the CBT triangle in cognitive behavioral therapy.
When we think of depression, for example, clients may find themselves experiencing a negative view of themselves, the world, and their future.
For example, clients may say things like:
- “Nothing will ever get better.”
- “Nobody cares about me.”
- “I’m a disappointment and worthless.”
Negative thoughts like these can be associated with depressed mood, suicidal ideation, avoidance, and social withdrawal. As depression impacts a person’s likelihood to withdraw socially, using a mood chart can demonstrate how depression fuels negative biases and impacts their recovery.
For example, when someone is feeling depressed, they may look for evidence to support their mood. Without an objective point of view, it can be difficult to shift out of a depressed state.
A daily mood chart, however, benefits clients by providing an opportunity to observe their mood and behavioral activation over a period of time.
When used in a therapeutic setting, daily mood charts can:
Support cognitive restructuring
Mood chart data provides talking points for identifying, evaluating, and modifying distorted thoughts into more realistic, positive, and rational beliefs.
Help clients observe their progress
By reviewing objective data during treatment, clients may be able to visualize the progress they are truly making.
Measure treatment effectiveness
Mood chart data can provide information for clinicians to determine the effectiveness of their treatment interventions and the need for adjustments.
Assess the client's risk
The data collected from using mood charts can help clinicians assess the client’s risk for suicidal ideation and other risky behaviors, and support the creation of a safety plan or crisis intervention.
Promote health and well-being
A daily mood chart can collect information on food intake, fluid intake, and sleep, which can provide support in discussing the impact of prioritizing healthy habits to promote health and well-being.
Provide information on behavioral activation
Data from the client’s key areas of functioning, like work, school, and social interactions, can demonstrate the impact of mood on the client’s behavioral activation.
Identify the need for referrals
The information collected in a daily mood chart may identify the need for outside interventions or referrals if treatment needs are outside the clinician’s area of expertise.
While daily mood charts may vary, a mood chart for depression typically includes:
- An activity log, describing the activity, environment, or situation
- A mood rating scale
- Different types of mood (or affect) to choose from
- The intensity of mood
- The opportunity to add notes or context
There are different types of daily mood trackers to choose from depending on the needs of your client and the data you want to collect. For example, you could suggest clients use a daily journal, a mood chart with more complex data points, a mobile app (like the CBT Thought Diary or Daylio Journal), online programs (such as Mood Tracker), or a visual tracker like coloring a mandala to correspond to a particular mood.
When to use daily mood charts with clients
You can use daily mood chart templates with a range of client situations, like:
Clients with bipolar disorder
Clients with bipolar disorder who would like to gain more awareness on how certain situations impact their disorder would benefit from using daily mood charts.
They can also help clients create an early warning detection system for bipolar episodes. Bipolar daily mood charts rate mood on a scale from very elevated to very depressed over the course of a week.
Charts like the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)’s daily mood chart uses daily ratings to specify the full range of moods, manic and depressive episodes, and other key information like signs and symptoms, medication use, and sleeping patterns.
To support trauma recovery
Mood charts can offer clients insight by providing the opportunity to reflect on how rumination, flashbacks, and other undesirable thoughts are impacting their mood and well-being.
Clients on new medication
A mood chart can help clients identify and track how their mood changes when starting a new medication for their mental health.
Clients with depression
As mentioned earlier, a daily mood chart PDF can help clients with depression by providing more data on the situations impacting their mood.
Clients with anxiety
Mood charts can help clients with anxiety identify internal and external triggers that cause an increase in stress and anxiety. Then, they provide you with the opportunity to discuss support strategies in therapy.
How to use the mood tracker PDF
Our free, downloadable mood tracker PDF includes key data points to measure depression and anxiety with clients.
Instruct your clients to track the following over a period of seven days:
- Energy levels
- Mood
- Sleep
- Irritability
- Movement
Using the free mood tracker PDF, clients can also include notes regarding any specific events, situations, or people that may have impacted their mood.
During follow-up therapy sessions, you can discuss the client’s findings from using the mood chart, and help them implement CBT strategies to understand the relation of their thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
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