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Summary
Using a depression mood chart allows clients to monitor daily mood fluctuations, identify personal triggers, and recognize patterns that affect their mental health.
Tracking daily emotional health helps clinicians evaluate medication efficacy, plan safety interventions, and track overall treatment progress accurately.
Use a mood tracking chart for depression as a practical psychoeducational tool to strengthen self-awareness and encourage healthy lifestyle changes between therapy sessions.
Depression mood charts are a helpful tool for clients to get a better understanding of their depression and the factors influencing their mood.
This article provides an overview of depression mood logs, their benefits, and how they can be helpful for clients and your practice. Plus, we’ve included a free downloadable mood tracking chart for depression to save to your electronic health record (EHR) and use in your practice.
What are depression mood swings?
Depression can have a significant impact on a person’s day-to-day life, affecting how they feel, think, and behave.
The symptoms of depression include five or more of the following symptoms over two weeks:
Depressed mood
Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities
Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much
Significant weight loss or weight gain, or a decrease or an increase in appetite
Moving more slowly or being more restless than usual
Fatigue or loss of energy
Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional)
Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness
Recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt, or making a suicide plan
If a client discloses suicidal ideation or intent, conduct a risk assessment and connect them with immediate resources, such as the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text, 24/7), or emergency services if there is imminent danger.
To be diagnosed with depression, symptoms must cause impairment of day-to-day functioning with a loss of interest/pleasure for most of the day, nearly every day.
Even though depression can include a low mood, mood symptoms can vary from day to day. For instance, one day clients may feel like they have a mild low mood, other days they may experience a more elevated mood, and some days they may feel more depressed. However, if mood changes include more dramatic shifts in mood and energy, those symptoms may indicate bipolar disorder.
How can a depression mood chart help clients?
A depression mood chart can help clients monitor their mood, behaviors, medication, energy levels, and related depressive symptoms.
Completing a daily depression mood chart can help to:
Connect certain people, situations, or events that may be contributing to depression, like a stressful job
Determine the effectiveness of medication and adherence to medication
Notice how social connection and other interventions may improve depression
Identify specific triggers, like staying in bed all day, to manage depression more effectively
Support accurate diagnosis, particularly if there is a variation in mood or if symptoms do not persist for longer than two weeks
Assess risk and the potential need for safety planning
Prompt other interventions, like behavioral activation or cognitive behavioral therapy
Monitor progress with treatment
Improve self-awareness about mood, behaviors, and factors influencing depressive symptoms
Disrupt unhelpful patterns of behavior by discussing them in therapy and devising a strategy to adapt to more helpful behaviors
Encourage healthy behaviors and lifestyle changes, like drinking enough water, getting outside, and getting enough sleep
Mood tracking charts for depression can be done via a printed worksheet, handout, journal entry, or clients may opt to use an app. The benefits of using an app-based technology provide the potential to link data with insights, psychoeducation, and data sharing with mental health and medical providers.
How to use the depression mood chart
You can download and use the mood tracking chart for depression in several ways:
Print or screen share the depression mood chart and use it as a psychoeducational session prompt to describe the connection between depression and other factors, such as sleep or rumination, that impact their symptoms.
Give the worksheet to the client to remind them of what you discussed during therapy.
Ask the client to use the depression mood chart between sessions and report their findings at their next therapy appointment.
Share the worksheet with coworkers.
Suggest that the client use the mood tracking chart for depression when starting a new medication to track how it affects their symptoms.
Combine the chart with other depression-related worksheets, such as our bipolar mood chart, tips on using a daily mood chart in your practice, the cycle of depression handout, coping skills for depression worksheet, and our depression activity scheduling worksheet.
Sources
American Psychiatric Association. (2024). What is Depression?
Bowen, R., Peters, E., Marwaha, S., Baetz, M., & Balbuena, L. (2017). Moods in Clinical Depression Are More Unstable than Severe Normal Sadness. Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Caldeira, C., Chen, Y., Chan, L., Pham, V., Chen, Y., & Zheng, K. (2018). Mobile apps for mood tracking: an analysis of features and user reviews. AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium.
National Institute of Mental Health. (2024). Depression.
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