This is an odd question, but one I asked myself after a series of Moodscope 100% scores. I remembered Mary mentioning she knew her medication was a problem when she dropped from her usual mid 70’s to the 30’s. One of my problems has been recognising recurrences of depression, despite a lifetime’s experience. I have usually stopped self monitoring (because I don’t need to, because I am now ‘well’) and attribute my tiredness to a cold, or being busy at work, or the seasonal mood variation that ‘everyone’ gets. This time around, I only realised I’d relapsed when I found I was making some significant mistakes at work. Then I realised (checking my list of relapse indicators that I keep in the back of my notebook) that I was indeed depressed again. The usual ambivalence about this – for who wants to be ‘ill’? But medication restarted, support from colleagues and some partial sick leave meant that my scores on Moodscope rose rapidly over a couple of months, and I was ‘better’.

Now I have been (gently) challenged on this whole concept of ill/well by my counsellor. Grudgingly, I think they may have a point! While I know when I am depressed, with scores of less than 10%, I am definitely ‘ill’, I just don’t function, and the interior life is pretty dark and irrational. However, I am now, coming off a period of consistently high scores, and questioning how realistic ‘well’ is as a concept – after all, I know that 100% all the time is just not possible (on the law of averages, surely?) but maybe somewhere in me I want to be there…

I would be interested to hear how others use their scores?

ReaderWriter

A Moodscope member