Conclusions  Electronic self-monitoring of mood in depression appears to be a valid measure of mood in contrast to self-monitoring of mood in mania .
Background Various paper-based mood charting instruments are used in the monitoring of symptoms in bipolar disorder .
During recent years an increasing number of electronic self-monitoring tools have been developed .
The objectives of this systematic review were 1 ) to evaluate the validity of electronic self-monitoring tools as a method of evaluating mood compared to clinical rating scales for depression and mania and 2 ) to investigate the effect of electronic self-monitoring tools on clinical ly relevant outcomes in bipolar disorder .
There are yet few studies on the effect of  electronic self-monitoring of mood  in bipolar disorder .
Long-term symptomatic status of bipolar I vs. bipolar II disorders.
Weekly affective symptom severity and polarity were compared in 135 bipolar I ( BP I ) and 71 bipolar II ( BP II ) patients during up to 20 yr of prospect i ve symptomatic follow-up . The course of BP I and BP II was chronic ; patients were symptomatic approximately half of all follow-up weeks ( BP I 46.6 % and BP II 55.8 % of weeks ) . Most bipolar disorder research has concentrated on episodes of MDD and mania and yet minor and subsyndromal symptoms are three times more common during the long-term course . Weeks with depressive symptoms predominated over manichypomanic symptoms in both disorders ( 31 ) in BP I and BP II at 371 in a largely depressive course ( depressive symptoms=59.1 % of weeks vs. hypomanic=1.9 % of weeks ) . BP I patients had more weeks of cyclingmixed polarity , hypomanic and subsyndromal hypomanic symptoms . Weekly symptom severity and polarity fluctuated frequently within the same bipolar patient , in which the longitudinal symptomatic expression of BP I and BP II is dimensional in nature involving all levels of affective symptom severity of mania and depression . Although BP I is more severe , BP II with its intensely chronic depressive features is not simply the lesser of the bipolar disorders ; it is also a serious illness , more so than previously thought ( for instance , as described in DSM-IV and ICP-10 ) . It is likely that this conventional view is the reason why BP II patients were prescribed pharmacological treatments significantly less often when acutely symptomatic and during intervals between episodes . Taken together with previous research by us on the long-term structure of unipolar depression , we su bmi t that the thrust of our work during the past decade supports classic notions of a broader affective disorder spectrum , bringing bipolarity and recurrent unipolarity closer together . However the genetic variation underlying such a putative spectrum remains to be clarified
Conclusions  Electronic self-monitoring of mood in depression appears to be a valid measure of mood in contrast to self-monitoring of mood in mania .
Background Various paper-based mood charting instruments are used in the monitoring of symptoms in bipolar disorder .
During recent years an increasing number of electronic self-monitoring tools have been developed .
The objectives of this systematic review were 1 ) to evaluate the validity of electronic self-monitoring tools as a method of evaluating mood compared to clinical rating scales for depression and mania and 2 ) to investigate the effect of electronic self-monitoring tools on clinical ly relevant outcomes in bipolar disorder .
There are yet few studies on the effect of  electronic self-monitoring of mood  in bipolar disorder .