Teen Designs a Colorful Way to Track Her Mental Health

 

If you are looking for a simple and colorful way to track your mental health, Keira Bailey has a suggestion. On January 8, the 16-year-old began tracking her days using a handmade chart that categorizes the daily state of her mental health by color.

Her brother saw Bailey’s tracker and shared it on Twitter, where it took off with more than 7,ooo retweets and 14,000 favorites.

Walked in my sister room and saw this……. pic.twitter.com/O0JbvkaI1s

— Saint Pablo (@TheLifeOfKale) February 2, 2017

The tracker, based off of a Pinterest “Year in Pixels” template, features eight different categories: “amazing, fantastic day,” “really good happy day,” “normal, average day,” “exhausted, tired day,” “depressed, sad day,” “frustrated, angry day,” “stressed, frantic day” and “sick day.”

“Using the tracker really helps my mental health, it makes me feel like every day I’m a new person,” Bailey told BuzzFeed. “This tracker has a huge impact on my everyday life – it’s a great way to keep track on how I am feeling during the week.”

Journaling, whether short-form like a bullet journal or longer like a more detailed diary, can have positive effects on mental health. “It’s inexpensive, it’s quick to access anywhere and it can deepen your own self-awareness and help you process and metabolism issues in your life like no other medium can,” Annie Wright, MFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist, said.

If you can’t make a chart yourself, there are other ways – journals and apps – that can help you track your mental health or habits.