Hangovers, bad friendships and sleepless nights: how an app showed me the causes of my bad moods

How are you feeling? Still seething, perhaps, after a spotty youth nabbed the seat you wanted on the train. Maybe worried about a big project your boss has put on your desk. Or simply alert because your coffee just kicked in.

Every day we feel a kaleidoscope of emotions, and now it has never been easier to keep track of them. There are 250 mood trackers on the Google Play store alone, including the latest offering from health service provider Babylon Health.

Monitor is a feature on the Babylon Health app which allows users to track their physical fitness (by synching with their wearables) as well as their mental health. It launched last month, and I have been hooked ever since.

The mood tracker takes the form of a wheel, almost like a compass, where you can plot your positivity (mood) against your energy (bodily response). As you guide your finger across the wheel, there are over 40 moods to choose from – each with a short description to help you decide if it’s the right fit.

“In testing we found that users gravitated towards the wheel shape as the optimal experience, lending itself to the idea that mood is continuously changing,” says Dr Joseph Lingham, an AI technician involved in making Babylon’s mood tracker, adding that the circular shape allows users to plot the intensity of their mood.

Once you have correctly identified your mood, you can add notes to explain why you feel that way. For instance, if you were feeling disappointed, you might write that you ‘made a mistake at work’ or ‘a friend cancelled plans’. After making a note, you can select from 23 picture symbols which represent the different factors that might be affecting your mood - from sleep to music, alcohol to finances. 

The app then charts your mood on a graph, splitting it into ‘positivity’ and ‘energy’, which incidentally helps you see a correlation between the two. This graph can be viewed by day, week or month, helping you to notice long-term patterns.  

“Mood tracking will help users identify patterns and trends in their mood. It gives users a chance (and a place) to check in with how they are feeling and perhaps even understand why,” explains Dr Lingham. 

“As well as empowering people to better understand and manage their mood, we believe that mood tracking has clinical value. It could allow clinicians and therapists to view trends at a glance, providing them with more detail then self-reported mood from memory and we hope it will be helpful in guiding the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of mood disorders,” he adds. Babylon has been clear, however, that the tracker is not currently a medically validated tool.

From using Babylon’s mood tracker almost every day, I have noticed a growing self-awareness. If I feel a significant shift in mood, I use the app to assess how I’m really feeling and why. From being more aware of my emotions, I am slightly better at catching a bad mood before it spirals into a bad day.

In particular, I have found it helpful to take note of what triggers my change in mood. From scrolling through the picture symbols for the month of October, for instance, I can tell that a lot of my happy emotions (from ‘Optimistic’ to ‘Cheerful’) are linked to getting good sleep, exercising, receiving positive feedback at work, and having date nights with my partner. 

Sad emotions (ranging from ‘Low Spirited’ to ‘Despondent’) are often tied to drinking too much the night before, not getting enough sleep and spending time with toxic friends. 

While the list of factors is fairly extensive, I would say that it could be improved by adding ‘Friendships’ and ‘Family’, as they are so significant to mental wellbeing.

Looking at the graph for my month of October, there is a definite correlation between energy and positivity, which indicates the importance of sleep to your mental health – but also how a bad mood can be draining to your body. 

The graph also demonstrates how much your mood fluctuates on a day-to-day basis. It is reassuring to see that you can be in a low mood and then, the very next day, your positivity can shoot up. As the old adage says: ‘This too shall pass’.

There are ways that the app could improve, however. The monthly graph could be more interactive – so, if you wanted to see what caused your mood to dip on a certain day, you could click on that point in the graph and read your notes for that day, or see the key factors affecting your mood. At present, you have to scroll underneath the graph to find the corresponding day, which requires effort. 

This may be set to change in the future. “Over time we hope to provide insights back to users into what triggers are affecting their mood and how, so that they may take action to improve their mood on their own,” says Dr Lingham.

Even without this feature, I would recommend the app if you are keen on changing your mindset. It is like a quick and instant way of keeping a diary, and could give you a clearer insight into how you’re really feeling.