App Review: Moodnotes

In my quest to create something real, here at Thought Life Co., I started searching advances in this field. I’m specifically looking forward to the technological advances are being made for the mental health community. Not only for patients but the doctors, counselors, advisors, and businesses. So I wanted to see what’s out here.

I decided to start with applications since they are easily accessible on cell phones. The first app I’m reviewing is Moodnotes. It’s a thought journal or mood diary, as stated on their website. I decided to give it a try, my goal being to use it for 21+ days.

• Cost: $4.99 (flat fee)

• iOS Rating: 4.7 (6.13+K), also offered on Android

• Ranking: #33 iOS Health & Fitness

What are you thinking about? Is it positive or negative? How’d you handle disappointment today? What types of things did you tell yourself? Was it easy or hard to deal with? How did you handle excitement today? What did you tell yourself? Have you ever called yourself a name in your mind? For instance, you forget to pick up dinner and when you get home the kids are starving. “You’re an idiot” you think. These thoughts, do you know how often you resort to this negativity or maybe even positivity? These are the types of questions moodnotes allows you to answer. Your app interaction allows the app to quantify your moods and emotional dispositions.

When starting the app for the first time it asks for location data, I chose to disable it. Then it requests to notify you and I enabled it. I personally don’t like enabling location data, I know that’s weird because cell phones are tracking us with/without permission. But hey, that’s me…

The idea is to allow you the opportunity to journal your thoughts throughout your day, instead of having to wait to get home to write/type. What I like is you can do this in the moment. You could carry a journal around but for most it’s too private and too important to keep accessible to the outside world. Since we keep our phones close by and they are usually password protected it makes sense to use your phone. Also, journaling in the moment projects that our assessment of our feelings will be more accurate, and typing them out may help us process our experiences better.

It starts by asking the general question: How are you? But instead of answering with words you have a choice of 7 faces: smiles that increase in size and the same for sad faces. There is a straight line that is supposed reveal your feelings are neutral.

You can quickly save this or proceed to more detail. Adding more detail gives you two lists of positive and negative emotions. Select the ones you believe will most accurately express how you are feeling, you can add percentages as well.

From there you can describe your thoughts. Here you discuss exactly what you are thinking. This will lead you to a list of thought traps you may have found yourself in. Thought traps are used by Cognitive Behavioral Therapists to explain a line of thinking your mind may portray as reality when it is not. If you’ve found that your thoughts fall in line with a trap, the app suggests re-framing the thought. The app then returns you to the list of positive/negative feelings to see if the re-framing has changed how you are feeling.

You have a choice of setting up daily reminders to remind you to journal. Over time, after a week of so, I suggest reviewing both your mood trends and insights. Both graphical and pictorial representations of your data/moods/feelings have been stored. It reveals what your mood tends to be over time or how you usually feel, as well as the top thought traps you run into most often.

I found this app to be both informative and helpful. For those that have made journal writing apart of their healthy lifestyle I believe this app is a good option. For those that haven’t, I think you might want to consider this as an option for your healthy life journey.

I had to switch phones in the middle of my trial which meant my data was stuck on my original phone, all my previous entries gone. Because it seems data is saved to the device instead an account, losing it becomes highly possible. I don’t like that because then I lost my trend information, as well my personal thoughts over that time. If there is a way to transport that information to a new device I’m not aware of it. Also the daily notification, the same every day, seemed a little monotonous “time to pause and reflect.” I felt like that could have been randomized some. I’m not sure it’s a good practice to journal at same time everyday. I’m wondering what the return is on doing it that way.

Pros

• Convenient
• No subscription required
• Private

Cons

• Access to data limited to device
• Mondane Reminder

Over all I found moodnotes to be a nice tool to use. Had my initial data transferred to my new device it would have been easier for me to continue my usage. Losing my first 15 or so days of data was a bit disheartening. But don’t let me experience discourage you, I suggest you give it a try. I journal, so I see the value of electronic journaling.

Photos in this blog are the property of Moodnotes, I am only using as reference.

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