Bipolar disorder mood diary

Learning more about manic depression or bipolar disorder will help you and your family manage your illness more successfully. Knowing how to identify early warning signs, including unusually high energy levels, sleeplessness or recurring depression, will help you considerably. Understanding how aspects of daily life, such as sleep patterns and stressful situations can affect your mood will enable you to manage your condition.

The mood diary can help you and your doctor monitor your illness. By gathering information about your mood, events in your life, sleep patterns and medications you are taking, you may notice patterns that would otherwise remain undetected. Taking your mood diary to your doctor will help him or her monitor your illness and treatment. If you find it difficult to complete the diary, a relative, partner or close friend may be able to help.

A blank mood diary, completed example mood diary and guide can be downloaded below.

Blank Chart: http://www.psychiatry24x7.com/content/backgrounders/www.psychiatry24x7.tld/psychiatry24x7.emea_com/blank_chart.pdf

Example Chart: http://www.psychiatry24x7.com/content/backgrounders/www.psychiatry24x7.tld/psychiatry24x7.emea_com/example_chart.pdf

Tips for completing a mood chart

What is this mood diary for?
Understanding the pattern of your mood symptoms is critical to successful treatment. During a visit with your_doctor, trying to remember your symptoms over the past few weeks or months can be difficult, especially if you are ill. By recording your mood daily, you will have much more reliable information to help your doctor decide what treatment is best for your condition.

The mood charts in this diary are intended to provide you with a simple way of monitoring your illness. Mood charting will allow you to bring together important pieces of information such as your mood state, medication levels, and stressful events. Recording this information on your chart generates a simple graph on which you can see emerging patterns that otherwise might be difficult to identify.

Mood charting is a good way to record events chronologically and will help you to report your mood to your doctor more efficiently. After a few months the mood chart can be a useful tool for looking to the future. Once you begin to track your mood and become accustomed to the chart, you will find it very quick and easy to enter information each day.

Internet Citation:
http://www.psychiatry24x7.com/bgdisplay.jhtml?itemname=mooddiary&page=ecall

Bipolar Disorder in Children - Keeping Kids Healthy

One minute your child is on top of the world -- giddy with laughter, full of energy and confidence. The next, he's raging, or crying, or talking of suicide. What's going on? The answer might - just might - be bipolar disorder, a mood disorder that can strike children as well as adults. But it isn't an easy diagnosis for even the most skilled mental health professional, and there's tremendous disagreement about what really constitutes bipolar disorder in kids, and how it should be treated. Join us for an in-depth visit with three children who have been diagnosed as bipolar, and meet the parents who care for them. And hear what two of the field's leading experts have to say about proper diagnosis and treatment: how to recognize the disorder in your child, how to avoid those all-too-easy incorrect diagnoses, and what you really need to know to get the right treatment for your child. Guests: Eva Kemp, age 13 Barbara Kemp, Eva’s mother Kevin Reardon, age 12 Loretta Reardon, Kevin’s mother Parker Ross, age 17 Lolli & Ken Ross, Parker’s parents (taped video pkg) Gabrielle Carlson, MD - Director, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Stony Brook School of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY; Jill Goldberg Arnold, PhD - Consulting Psychologist, Multi-Family Psycho-Education for Families of Children with Bipolar Disorder, The Ohio State University

Clinical Studies for Bipolar Disorder

Some people with bipolar disorder receive medication and/or psychosocial therapy by volunteering to participate in clinical studies (clinical trials). Clinical studies involve the scientific investigation of illness and treatment of illness in humans. Clinical studies in mental health can yield information about the efficacy of a medication or a combination of treatments, the usefulness of a behavioral intervention or type of psychotherapy, the reliability of a diagnostic procedure, or the success of a prevention method. Clinical studies also guide scientists in learning how illness develops, progresses, lessens, and affects both mind and body. Millions of Americans diagnosed with mental illness lead healthy, productive lives because of information discovered through clinical studies. These studies are not always right for everyone, however. It is important for each individual to consider carefully the possible risks and benefits of a clinical study before making a decision to participate.

In recent years, NIMH has introduced a new generation of "real-world" clinical studies. They are called "real-world" studies for several reasons. Unlike traditional clinical trials, they offer multiple different treatments and treatment combinations. In addition, they aim to include large numbers of people with mental disorders living in communities throughout the U.S. and receiving treatment across a wide variety of settings. Individuals with more than one mental disorder, as well as those with co-occurring physical illnesses, are encouraged to consider participating in these new studies. The main goal of the real-world studies is to improve treatment strategies and outcomes for all people with these disorders. In addition to measuring improvement in illness symptoms, the studies will evaluate how treatments influence other important, real-world issues such as quality of life, ability to work, and social functioning. They also will assess the cost-effectiveness of different treatments and factors that affect how well people stay on their treatment plans.

The Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD) is seeking participants for the largest-ever, "real-world" study of treatments for bipolar disorder. To learn more about STEP-BD or other clinical studies, see the Clinical Trials page on the NIMH Web site http://www.nimh.nih.gov, visit the National Library of Medicine's clinical trials database http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, or contact NIMH.