I have been keeping track of my daily depression levels for
two years now. I started doing it
because Cliff and I noticed that my depression was linked to my menstrual cycle
and I wanted to find out if there was a definite pattern. Here’s the first graph I made of those first
months. It is the average score for each
day over a 28 day cycle for 4 cycles (basically 16 weeks):
This graph shows just how much my hormones were affecting my
mood. The worst two times were day 4 and
day 17. Day 17 was just before my period
started. Having such a stark visual
description was very eye-opening. For
me, this was obviously a hormone issue.
Then I started taking a low-hormone birth control and now my
graph looks like this:
This graph covers the last two years. There are still dips in similar places, but
overall much better than it was.
Before I continue, I’ll give a little explanation of the
numbers. My scale goes from 0 to 4. A zero (red on the chart below) is when I
feel so awful that I am not getting out of bed.
There have only been three days in the last 2 years when this has
happened. A score of 1 (orange) is when
my depression is bad, but not awful. I
am crying, but can still perform basic functions. A score of 2 (yellow) is when I’m just not
feeling good. I may try to avoid some
things, but I can function fairly well.
A score of 3 (green) is when I did not feel any depression that
day. And a score of 4 (blue) is when the
day was perfect. No depression and
feeling happy all day. This is my chart
of the last two years. (The black boxes
represent the first day of the month in case you’re wondering.)
Now that I have two years’ worth of data, I decided to compare years to see if there any noticeable patterns. Below is the graph of the average score for each cycle of the last two years. It’s obvious that my depression is better last year than it was the previous year. (The blue is 2015/16 and the yellow is 2016/17.) The overall average score for 2015/16 was 2.3 and for 2016/17 it was 2.5. That’s a big improvement.
The x-axis numbers (1-13) represent a 4-week cycle. There is a sharp drop around the 6th
cycle which corresponds to the end of December/ beginning of January. Apparently Christmas was pretty depressing
the last two years. Not sure what to do
with this other than keep an eye on it.
Maybe another two years’ worth of data will give me a better idea of
whether this is coincidence or an actual pattern.
Another thing I keep track of with these scores is the total
number of days for each score, i.e. how many “3” days, how many “2” days,
etc. I started doing this to remind
myself that I’ve had more good days (threes and fours) than bad days (twos,
ones, and zeroes). In 2015/2016, 45% of
my days were depression-free. In
2016/2017, it jumped to 63%. My longest
streak of “3” days is 18 in a row.
Two more graphs that show how I’ve improved are shown
below. These show the total number of
days of each score over the cycle. The
first half of 2015/16, I had more “2”s than “3”s, and around Christmas there
were more “1”s than “3”s, but the end of that year was better. This past year, there were only two cycles
where I had more depression days than not.
Apparently Christmas and June were rough.
A few weeks ago, Cliff and I were talking about my
spreadsheet and he asked me which day of the week was the best/worst. I hadn’t thought of trying to find patterns
there yet, so I made more graphs. They
don’t show very much, but I found out that my worst day is Sunday and the best
is Friday. Friday makes sense because
it’s the first day of my weekend, but Sunday is a bit more complicated. Is it because I have too much time to
myself? Because I have a “social
hangover” from dealing with so many kids all weekend? Still trying to figure that one out.
All this is a very nerdy way to try and figure myself
out. Now if only I could find a way to chart my anxiety.
No comments:
Post a Comment