14 DAY TRIAL // Have you ever felt like absolutely nothing is able to raise your interest or that the greatest thing in the world might happen right next to you and you would not even notice it? Or that everybody is against you, nobody understands, nobody cares and even the ones that you love are trying to take advantage of you? If for most people this is just a mood, a stage, something that you experience when it rains, there are people that spend their entire life going from ecstasy to agony in a matter of seconds, or almost never experiencing true happiness. The most interesting part is that usually these feelings are triggered by meaningless things that can be controlled pretty easily. Once these triggers are identified, avoiding them not only that reduces dramatically the number of depression episodes but also diminishes their intensity and length. The goal of the Optimism application is to efficiently determine the cause for those episodes in order to easily recognize the danger and take appropriate measures.
The Looks
The interface is very organized and offers easy access to every feature. The main window helps you create a database with the events that mark your every day, both negative and positive, recording your mood and the elements that determine each feeling. It also uses visuals highlights in order to offer you the possibility to better understand the connection between the surrounding environment and your mental health.
The Works
The main window has four panels used to manage, but also to graphically represent the information that you make available, concentrating on the symptoms and recording the stay-well strategies that you use.
The first panel, the record screen, is designed to gather information. It allows you to grade your mood for the respective day, the degree in which you were able to cope with things, the period of time you have spent exercising, how many hours you have slept and the quality of your sleep. You must also mention if you took your medication, that is if your doctor prescribed any. In the right part of the panel you will have to click on the things you experienced that day, grouped in three sections: the get well strategy used, the triggers that you experienced and the symptoms that were generated. Also you have a section where you can add comments, while every segment has two things that can be modified from the Preferences menu. The things that you may add must be specific to your behavior.
The next panel, the chart screen, generates a chart and a graph extracting information from the data entered in a certain period. This way you can better see the evolution of your illness and identify patterns. In order to better comprehend these elements the report screen shows the information in a written form that can be printed or saved in text or PDF format.
But all this information you gathered is useless without a plan. That is why the last panel does just that: it creates the environment where everything can be put together. Staying well takes a lot of energy and determination for those who recover from depression and having a plan usually helps because it allows them to stay focused on their goal.
The Good
In a world where everybody is living fast, making rush decisions every moment, without caring what happens or who gets hurt in the process, Optimism allows you to see the bigger picture. You need to detach yourself from this supersonic world and analyze objectively the facts, the actions and reactions in order to identify the things that push you over the edge and also to keep an eye on the important matters. And the best thing is that you are able to keep all this information to yourself due to the password feature incorporated in the program features, even if the option is not active in the trial version.
The Bad
It is very important to understand that this software does not substitute professional medical help. It does not represent a treatment or a method to diagnose yourself. Also, the interface should have been a little more "optimistic".
The Truth
Optimism is only a tool that tries to help depressive people or their caregivers better understand their depressive episodes. The fact is that the degree of success depends in a very large proportion on the way this tool is used. What I really like about the program is that it can be used by anyone, allowing you to observe elements present in your behavior that you would not normally notice. But, although the idea is quite interesting, the software itself does not offer any guaranties and is pretty expensive considering the features ($19.95).
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
