Listening to the silent struggles of bipolar disorder through sonification of iMoodJournal data

Abstract

This paper reports a preliminary case study for demonstrating the potential of data sonification for telling a real-life narrative of experienced mood swings through music. We obtained iMoodJournal data (2017–2020) from a voluntarily participating male who was diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder in 2015. The monitored period covers prolonged stretches of severe depression, particularly during fall, winter, and spring months. These “winter depressions” were usually superseded by remission during summer. These seasonal patterns were similar and recurring in the period between 2017 and 2019. In 2020, the depressions were relatively mild due to the patient spending winter in southern latitudes. However, another severe depression episode occurred during summer 2020 instead, which likely emanated from a period of medication discontinuation. The symptomatology was overall complex and highly dynamic, manifested in the combination of mood specifying tags that the user associated with determined mood scores in the iMoodJournal. This complexity was difficult to capture in the form of the numerical scores visualized in Figures S1 and S2.