Mood diary

Daily mood tracking is one of the most useful and lowest-cost data sources in depression and behavioral activation work. The mood diary in Rivet is designed for friction-low capture: a 0-10 slider, optional hours of sleep, optional free-text context. Most clients fill it in under twenty seconds. No total score, no severity band. The clinical signal lives in the trend over time — patterns the client and practitioner read together at the weekly review.

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What it captures

Four fields, all optional:

• Date — defaults to today
• How you’re feeling — 0-10 slider, low → great
• Hours of sleep last night — decimal, optional
• Anything notable today — textarea, optional

The sleep field is included because mood and sleep are entangled in most depression presentations, and clients often connect bad nights to next-day low mood without prompting. The context field exists so the client can pin the rating to something concrete (productive morning, afternoon energy crash) which makes the weekly review more diagnostic.

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Why a single global mood rather than per-emotion sliders

The friction-low design is the point. A sub-twenty-second worksheet gets filled every day. A two-minute worksheet gets filled three times a week and then abandoned. A few clients benefit from finer-grained emotion tracking (per-emotion sliders, mood + anxiety + energy split). For those clients, the underlying intervention is the conversation about what’s being missed by a global rating — and you can supplement the mood diary with notes in the context field naming the specific emotion. The single-slider design holds.

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When to use it

• Foundational homework in CBT and BA. Standard care for depression treatment for the past fifty years.
• Daily, ideally same time each day. Bedtime is the most common time because the day is over and the rating reflects the whole day rather than the moment.
• Reviewed weekly with the practitioner, especially in the first 4-8 weeks of treatment when patterns are emerging. Often continues across the whole treatment course.
• In-session as a quick check-in opener. How’s the mood the last few days? — the client looks at their week of entries and the answer is data rather than memory.

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How the weekly review tends to work

The most useful patterns from a week of mood diary entries:

• Day-of-week patterns. Mondays consistently low, Fridays consistently high — points at work or weekday structure.
• Sleep coupling. Days following < 6 hours of sleep that are systematically lower — points at sleep as a treatment target. Pair with the sleep diary for CBT-I.
• Activity coupling. When the context field mentions specific activities, the activities present on high-mood days inform behavioral activation scheduling. Pair with the activity check-in.
• The flat-line pattern. Several days in a row of 4 or 5 with no variability — clinically distinctive. Either the client is at a stable low baseline (treatment target) or the client is rating without engaging (worksheet target).

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In-session mechanics

Templates → Mood diary. Four fields on one screen. You fill it during the session opener as a quick read-and-rate (how was yesterday, zero to ten?) or review the client’s homework entries by reopening prior responses in the Templates tab. The entry copies to clipboard for paste into session notes.

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Citation

No single inventor — daily mood tracking is generic published clinical method. Foundational references:

• Lewinsohn, P. M. (1974). “A behavioral approach to depression.” In R. J. Friedman & M. M. Katz (Eds.), The Psychology of Depression.
• Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. The “Daily Mood Log” worksheet.

Daily mood tracking has been standard care in CBT and behavioral activation for over fifty years. The concept is uncopyrightable. Field labels and plain-language phrasing are original to Rivet.

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When not to use it

• Clients who find daily self-rating activating or shame-inducing. A small number of clients (often with severe self-criticism or perfectionism) find the daily rating itself becomes the target of harsh self-judgment. If the worksheet is making the cycle worse, drop it.
• Bipolar mood logging. Bipolar tracking benefits from a different worksheet that captures mood, energy, sleep, and medication adherence together. The single-slider mood diary undersamples manic and mixed states.
• Acute crisis monitoring. The mood diary is a treatment-progress tool, not a risk-flagging surface. Use the C-SSRS for suicide risk and the safety plan for crisis-period work.

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