Tracking moods
08/05/13 05:32
I was an early adopter of smart phones. My cell phone provider was not the first to offer the iPhone, but before I got access to my iPhone, I had owned a Blackberry and a Palm phone. The iPhone was a big step forward in technology for me. I had used prior phones to keep addresses and appointments and I did some e-mail with my blackberry, but once I had the iPhone I installed a variety of different applications. I browse the web, listen to music and podcasts, read books, take pictures, scan the news, compare Bible versions, do a fair amount of social networking, review documents, project presentations, keep my grocery lists, track my eating, keep my first aid manual, keep mileage records for my vehicles, write notes, check recipes, count calories, record my exercise and a lot more. I even have my Starbucks card on my phone and I manage my spending and make my purchases in that venue with an app.
There are thousands and thousands of available apps. In fact, the Apple app store is coming close to 50 billion apps sold. New apps and possibilities become available almost every day. I am sure that the way I use my phone now is as different from the way I will use it in the future as it is from the way I used my phone 5 years ago.
Along the way, there are a lot of apps that I am unlikely to use. I’m not big on games. I have the game center app that came with the phone, a scrabble game and a crossword puzzle app, but I find that I seldom play any of them. I prefer scrabble with live persons and the newspaper prints more crossword puzzles than I complete in the midst of my current lifestyle. When I have extra time, I’m more likely to be reading a book on the phone than playing games.
Some apps that have caught my eye are ones that track moods. There are some mental illnesses in which awareness of one’s mood is part of the treatment and management of the disease. It seems to me that a cell phone app might become a useful tool for those who suffer bipolar disorder, for example. Most of the apps that track moods, however, are not serious tools. Like the mood rings, they attempt to tell the user what mood they are in. MyMoodTracker is a sort of mood diary that provides a framework for recording your mood. MoodPanda is another tool that allows rating and tracking of moods.
Researchers at Cambridge University have taken the idea of a mood tracker a step farther. Emotion Sense pops up several times throughout the day and asks the user to rate their mood and report their activity levels. Instead of just tracking, happy, sad, angry or neutral, Emotion Sense asks a series of questions. The user slides their finger across the screen to indicate various levels of calm, anxiety, and other mood indicators. The system of data input has been designed by psychologists. Initially it is anticipated that the app would be part of psychological therapy. The psychologist would use data from the app to get a better picture of what is going on between sessions and the patient could have access to feedback about mood while away from the therapist.
The app is early in its development and like other technologies, I’m sure it will go through a lot of transitions before it reaches its most useful version, but it holds some promise for assisting in the treatment of mental illness.
For now, however, I don’t seem to need a phone app to tell me what mood I’m in. I’m generally pretty aware of my mood. Yesterday I was in a funk all day. (Note that “in a funk” isn’t a mood category rated by the app.) I had turned off my alarm (also a smartphone app) the day before because I wrote my blog in the middle of the night. So yesterday the alarm was still turned off and I overslept – not by a little, but by two hours. I awoke with a start and in a panic, rushed off a blog post too quickly, showered and headed to work. I barely made it to my first meeting of the day and went from that one directly into another. I checked my e-mail between the meetings, as I had taken an e-mail vacation on Monday. There were lots of notes and one was a rather harsh criticism of the fact that our worship service had gone long on Sunday. The criticism was valid. We did go over more than we like on Sunday. The reasons were complex, but we learned from the experience and the thoughts in the note will probably help us manage some of the dynamics differently in the future. Usually I take criticism pretty well. Yesterday I took it personally. I carried that mood into my meeting and by lunch time I was not in a good mood.
The afternoon wasn’t much better. In the morning my first greeting from our office administrator was about computer problems. In the afternoon the technician was unable to solve the problems and recommended erasing a hard drive and restoring a computer. I didn’t have time to do the job, so hired a technician to do something that I know how to do. The result is that the church has to spend money that we had not anticipated. We have a good backup system for data, but I’m sure that there is a good day’s work ahead reinstalling applications, restoring e-mail address books, and other things. It isn’t the computer I use, so I’ll be playing technical support for a couple of weeks before we are back to full productivity from that employee.
I came home not having accomplished much with the day. The evening didn’t go as planned, either, but that is another story. I didn’t need a phone app to tell me I was having a bad day.
I don’t need a phone app to tell me that today is going to be better. I’m up and finishing my blog in my usual schedule. The computer will be returned to the church this morning. I can get some extra work done before my first meeting today and I start the day with a Bible study with colleagues whose support and care I have enjoyed for many years.
So I’ll just call the blog my technological psychotherapist. Write it out; let it go; get on with the next day. Its bound to be better than yesterday!
There are thousands and thousands of available apps. In fact, the Apple app store is coming close to 50 billion apps sold. New apps and possibilities become available almost every day. I am sure that the way I use my phone now is as different from the way I will use it in the future as it is from the way I used my phone 5 years ago.
Along the way, there are a lot of apps that I am unlikely to use. I’m not big on games. I have the game center app that came with the phone, a scrabble game and a crossword puzzle app, but I find that I seldom play any of them. I prefer scrabble with live persons and the newspaper prints more crossword puzzles than I complete in the midst of my current lifestyle. When I have extra time, I’m more likely to be reading a book on the phone than playing games.
Some apps that have caught my eye are ones that track moods. There are some mental illnesses in which awareness of one’s mood is part of the treatment and management of the disease. It seems to me that a cell phone app might become a useful tool for those who suffer bipolar disorder, for example. Most of the apps that track moods, however, are not serious tools. Like the mood rings, they attempt to tell the user what mood they are in. MyMoodTracker is a sort of mood diary that provides a framework for recording your mood. MoodPanda is another tool that allows rating and tracking of moods.
The app is early in its development and like other technologies, I’m sure it will go through a lot of transitions before it reaches its most useful version, but it holds some promise for assisting in the treatment of mental illness.
For now, however, I don’t seem to need a phone app to tell me what mood I’m in. I’m generally pretty aware of my mood. Yesterday I was in a funk all day. (Note that “in a funk” isn’t a mood category rated by the app.) I had turned off my alarm (also a smartphone app) the day before because I wrote my blog in the middle of the night. So yesterday the alarm was still turned off and I overslept – not by a little, but by two hours. I awoke with a start and in a panic, rushed off a blog post too quickly, showered and headed to work. I barely made it to my first meeting of the day and went from that one directly into another. I checked my e-mail between the meetings, as I had taken an e-mail vacation on Monday. There were lots of notes and one was a rather harsh criticism of the fact that our worship service had gone long on Sunday. The criticism was valid. We did go over more than we like on Sunday. The reasons were complex, but we learned from the experience and the thoughts in the note will probably help us manage some of the dynamics differently in the future. Usually I take criticism pretty well. Yesterday I took it personally. I carried that mood into my meeting and by lunch time I was not in a good mood.
The afternoon wasn’t much better. In the morning my first greeting from our office administrator was about computer problems. In the afternoon the technician was unable to solve the problems and recommended erasing a hard drive and restoring a computer. I didn’t have time to do the job, so hired a technician to do something that I know how to do. The result is that the church has to spend money that we had not anticipated. We have a good backup system for data, but I’m sure that there is a good day’s work ahead reinstalling applications, restoring e-mail address books, and other things. It isn’t the computer I use, so I’ll be playing technical support for a couple of weeks before we are back to full productivity from that employee.
I came home not having accomplished much with the day. The evening didn’t go as planned, either, but that is another story. I didn’t need a phone app to tell me I was having a bad day.
I don’t need a phone app to tell me that today is going to be better. I’m up and finishing my blog in my usual schedule. The computer will be returned to the church this morning. I can get some extra work done before my first meeting today and I start the day with a Bible study with colleagues whose support and care I have enjoyed for many years.
So I’ll just call the blog my technological psychotherapist. Write it out; let it go; get on with the next day. Its bound to be better than yesterday!