Posted by Bob on September 11, 1999, at 19:57:51
In reply to Re: I need a reference point!, posted by Bob on September 11, 1999, at 19:33:59
> I've heard the same about dropping a med then picking it back up. I was hypomanic (probably) on just 10mg/day of zoloft.
10?! Oops! I was sure I typed "100".
Yeah, the 1-10 scale is a nice quick thing that others tend to grasp quite easily. Of course, never being satisfied with the easy, I had to go and make a complicated one. The 1-10 scale just doesn't give me enough information for keeping track of how my meds are working in my journal. For those of you who prefer to obsess about the details, here it is:
I give two ratings to the following mental attributes-- joy, sadness, mental acuity, social inhibition, mindfulness (as opposed to forgetfulness), assertiveness, motivation, libido. Yes, I think you can be sad and joyful at the same time ... I think they're somewhat independent and therefore deserve their own ratings. Of course, this is still a fairly new instrument, so any suggestions on other things to include are welcome.
The two ratings are for Presence and Importance. Each is a scale to 5. Presence is how stronglyt tuned in am I to this chunk of my mental life--(1) abnormally low, (2) low, (3) on target, (4) high, (5) abnormally high. Importance is how critical this chunk is--(1) not at all, to (5) my life revolves on it.
Here's an example, rated PG-13 for you kids out there, but I'm picking this one because its probably an issue a lot of us having difficulty explaining to our partners. Right now for libido, I'm at about a 2/1. It's practically non-existant for me, and due to a complex of pharmacological and psychological factors, I really don't care that its almost non-existent. Well, my girlfriend still can't accept it all ... but it does give me some extra ammunition for the inevitable arguments.
Cheers,
bob
poster:Bob
thread:11426
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990829/msgs/11444.html