BipolarLab.com

Many thanks to all for your interest in my hosted projects. I have been unable to respond to all the individual emails I have been receiving about the eMonitoring project. Please accept my apologies for this. I am trying to write up my PhD thesis, along with having to do a number of other things to pay the bills, so it has been difficult to keep up with all the individual emails but again thank you for your interest and thanks for letting me know about your own bipolar cats and dogs!

You may continue to register your interest here.

My student’s web-study is still going on so feel free to participate if you like (that’s a better way to register your interest). There is no system in place yet to give you individual reports but this is something I have been trying to implement. Little George is also writing up at the moment so hopefully his work will give us some data to put proper and useful reports in place. Your data will help to get the important information about how these scales work and they may be helpful later on for the eMonitoring project should this ever be ready to run on its own.

I am sorry I cannot meet all the demand for this project but I am a single PhD student/research worker trying to get through his thesis and life in this funny world called academia. However, there are other projects out there that will give you some of the tools you may need to do your mood monitoring:

1. MoodScope:
http://www.moodscope.com (academic / commercial - free / Web)
This is a very promising mood monitoring project. It is probably going to be more suited to people who have “softer” forms of Bipolar disorder and are not interested in monitoring their medications. The final version of this is yet to come but I am sure it will be great. MoodScope has been developed by a friend who has a mild form of Bipolar disorder and he is public about it.

2. MoodChart:
https://moodchart.org (academic - free / Web)
This is a more clinical approach to mood monitoring. It will help you do your retrospective life-chart (ie. history) as well as your daily mood monitoring. They have implemented an interesting email reminder system to assist you keep up with it. iMonitor (my baby bipolar diary) was inspired and modeled after the daily approach of this system (NIMH Life-Chart). Professor Goodwin is one of the main authors of Manic Depressive Illness - our much respected and loved Bipolar Bible.

3. PatientsLikeMe:
http://www.patientslikeme.com (commercial - free / Web)
This is probably one of the most serious commercial web 2.0 approaches to illness monitoring. They have just launched their Mood community. I am around there as well but frankly I haven’t got the time to get involved as much as I would like. They also have an expanding community/forum to help you interact with patientslikeyou or me or others, you choose! Interesting concept and business model.

4. ChronoRecord:
http://www.chronorecord.org (academic - free / small fee / Windows only)
This is actually one of the two software applications I decided to use in the eMonitoring project. They don’t have a web version available (please do ask them for one) but Tasha Glenn has done a great job at putting a simple yet effective mood monitoring application together. They also have good validation data and they do some serious research with it. I can only hope one day to publish up to their level . Tasha has been very professional through out our collaboration and in many ways has been doing this on her own too - so please do support her work even if it costs you a little.

5. Palm Life Chart:
http://www.lifechart.de (academic - free / Palm OS)
This is the closest approximation to date of the NIMH-LifeChart method on a mobile device. The software runs on Palm OS (so you will need a Palm handheld device, which are currently cheap to find on eBay). This has been developed by Dr Lars Schaerer, a tall but very friendly German Psychiatrist from the University hospital of Freiburg. Lars is the pioneer in this Palm Mood monitoring approach and he is the one who got me going with my iMonitor. We have given each other a good deal of headaches in the past but we are still trying to work together.

All the above are Mood Monitoring tools I would use myself and in many ways they serve different needs. My advise would be to sample around and use what works for you. I am sure there will be more to come and hopefully one day you may see my own solution to this - PhD and funding permitting. I am hoping to put something grander together for bipolar people but it is highly unlikely to happen without a business angel coming around. Yet, there is no time or the time to go after one. One day…

But remember all the above are not there to replace your therapy but are there to facilitate your self-management and work with your doctor.

Happy Mood Monitoring