To log mood before migraine pain starts, write down what you feel and the clock time, then record when head pain begins if it follows. Keep separate notes for mood during pain, after pain and on pain-free days; a mood change alone cannot tell you whether an attack is coming or whether you have depression. Start with a manageable two-week record and bring it to your clinician.
How to log mood before the migraine pain starts
Use the same brief mood words each time: usual or neutral, low, irritable, or unusually elevated. Add an observation time rather than deciding immediately that the feeling is a warning sign. If no pain follows, keep the note; that comparison is part of what makes the diary useful.
A two-week record is a practical starting format, not a validated diagnostic interval or a minimum you must complete before seeking care. Infrequent attacks may need a longer record, guided by your clinician. You can bring a partial diary to an appointment, and you should not postpone care to collect more entries.
Make one short daily check when possible, including days without head pain, and add a timestamp when something noticeably changes. When pain begins, record its start, severity and effect on activity alongside any acute medicine taken. After pain ends, note whether mood and energy have returned to their usual level or whether symptoms continue.
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Mood and time | A plain description and clock time: for example, “irritable at 07:00”. Record uncertainty rather than assigning a phase. |
| Head pain | Whether head pain occurred that day; its start and stop times, severity, and interruption to normal activity. |
| Other observations | Brief relevant symptoms such as yawning, neck stiffness, nausea, sensory changes or fatigue, with their timing. |
| Acute medicine | Name, dose, time and repeat doses, if any. Separately mark whether any acute headache medicine was used that calendar day. |
| Recovery and pain-free mood | Mood after pain stops and mood outside attack windows. An empty entry means not recorded, not “normal”. |
What standard headache diaries can miss
A headache calendar is useful, but a tick beside a pain day may hide the hours before it. It can also miss a low-mood day that never leads to head pain. Keeping those observations prevents a diary from displaying only the events that fit your first explanation.
The basic fields recommended in headache-diary guidance include dates, duration, severity, associated symptoms and medicine use. This method adds explicit mood windows and a pain-free comparison. It is an editorial recording aid, not a validated mental-health questionnaire.
A failed log that only marks headache days
Consider an illustrative entry that says only “Thursday: migraine”. It does not reveal whether irritability appeared Wednesday evening, whether low mood began during Thursday’s pain, or whether fatigue continued on Friday. Adding those times improves the history, while leaving the interpretation open for clinical discussion.
The windows to label
Migraine attacks can involve prodrome, aura, headache and postdrome, but everyone does not experience every phase. The headache classification distinguishes prodromal symptoms from aura. In your diary, use observable timing first; the phrase “before pain” does not itself confirm prodrome.
Before the pain
Mood changes can occur in the hours or day or two before pain, sometimes alongside yawning, cravings or neck stiffness. Write “low at 08:00; pain began 14:00” rather than “depression caused my migraine”. A craving before an attack also does not establish that a food caused it; timing and repetition still need interpretation.
There is a limit to how much a mood note can predict. A prospective diary study of 487 people with migraine found increased acute depressive symptoms during the headache phase, rather than an increase in the prodromal phase. That group result does not erase individual experiences, but it does not support treating depressed mood as a dependable advance warning.
- Observation: What changed, and at what clock time?
- Follow-up: Did pain follow, and when? Keep notes even when it did not.
- Uncertainty: Were you remembering the time later, or was the note made as it happened?
- Context: Was mood different on other days without pain?
Aura, when present
Record familiar aura symptoms separately from mood, including what happened and when it began and ended. Aura commonly involves visual, sensory or language symptoms and may occur before or with headache. New weakness, speech difficulty or vision loss should not be labelled “just aura” through a diary; seek urgent assessment.
During pain
Pain can make detailed recording unrealistic, so a minimal note is enough until you are able to add more. Record the pain start, a simple severity description, whether it interrupted activity and any medicine actually taken. If an observation is reconstructed later, say so instead of filling the gap with an exact time you do not remember.
After pain
The end of head pain and the end of an attack’s effects may not coincide. Recovery can include fatigue, slowed thinking and mood changes; record when pain stopped and when the remaining symptoms eased. Continuing low mood deserves attention in its own right rather than an automatic assumption that it is all migraine-related.
Record sleep disruption as context if it affects how the next day feels. The guide to depression and sleep problems explains why sleep quantity alone does not describe restoration. The diary cannot decide whether poor sleep, migraine, mood symptoms or several factors account for tiredness.
Mood outside attack windows
Pain-free observations give the record a comparison point. A low afternoon without an attack is still useful information, even if it does not fit the pattern you expected. If low mood, loss of interest or functioning problems persist outside attacks, discuss them with a clinician and use the depression symptoms guide as background rather than a diagnosis.
A completed 14-day example
The following record is entirely illustrative; it is not a patient story or observed study data. It includes one head-pain day, a recovery day and a separate low-mood day without pain. Those differences explain what the diary preserves, but one attack cannot establish a recurring pattern.
Swipe horizontally to compare on small screens.
| Day | Observation | What it preserves |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 2 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 3 | No head pain; low mood at 18:00. | No pain followed that day; keep the observation. |
| Day 4 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 5 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 6 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 7 | Irritable at 16:00, with yawning; no pain that day. | Record before-pain timing only retrospectively; relationship uncertain. |
| Day 8 | Irritable 07:00; head pain 10:00–20:00; low mood during pain. | Usual prescribed acute medicine noted at 10:30; one medicine day, not a dose count. |
| Day 9 | No head pain; low and tired at 09:00; eased by 17:00. | After-pain observation; one recovery entry does not prove a diagnosis. |
| Day 10 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 11 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 12 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 13 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
| Day 14 | No head pain; usual mood recorded. | No acute headache medicine recorded as taken. |
A pain-only calendar would show Day 8 and lose most of this context. The low mood on Day 3 matters because no headache occurred that day, while the Day 7 note remains uncertain even though pain followed the next morning. A clinician can consider the sequence without the diary assigning a cause.
Create your own visit record
Migraine Mood Studio gives you 14 dated entries and separate mood labels for the relevant windows. Use the short detail field for essential timing and impact, and keep an additional note or medication list if you need more space. The sample is labelled illustrative, and the summary counts entries rather than predicting an attack or identifying depression.
Migraine Mood Studio
Record the timing. Bring a clearer question to your visit.
For observation, not diagnosis. This diary does not predict attacks, screen for depression, or recommend medicines. New neurological symptoms or a sudden severe headache need urgent care.
Choose one mood label for each relevant window on each calendar day. Leave unobserved windows as “Not recorded”. Use “Pain-free” for mood outside the attack windows. A day can contain several windows; the labels are your observations, not confirmed migraine phases.
Entries stay in this page’s memory only. Refreshing or leaving clears them. Download your CSV before leaving. No health entries are saved to a server or browser storage by this component.
Add observations to create a summary.
Your observation summary
Your summary will show recorded days, headache days, acute-medicine days and the timing of low or irritable mood. Missing entries remain unknown.
Seek medical review for new, worsening or persistent symptoms, including low mood outside attacks. If you may harm yourself or cannot stay safe, contact local emergency services or urgent crisis support now; do not wait to finish a diary.
The A4 record shows the daily observations, missing entries, simple totals and your question for the visit. The full CSV keeps the same entry fields in a format you can store privately or share directly with your clinician. Entries are held only while the page is open, so export before refreshing or leaving.
What to total before the visit
Count headache days and acute-medicine days separately, using calendar dates. An attack that crosses midnight can contribute to more than one headache day, while several doses on one day still count as one medicine day. Keep dose details as well, because a day total alone does not describe everything a clinician needs.
- Number of days with any observation, including pain-free days.
- Reported headache days and dates with missing headache information.
- Reported acute-medicine days, plus names, doses and times in your accompanying notes.
- Low or irritable mood marks before, during and after pain, and outside attack windows.
- The clearest uncertainty or question you want the clinician to address.
Do not convert a small set of mood marks into a percentage chance of migraine or a depression score. Several windows can occur on the same day, so their totals are not independent attack counts. A two-week total also cannot determine medication-overuse headache; that assessment depends on medicine type, frequency and a longer history.
What this log cannot decide
Migraine and depression can coexist, but the timing of a single mood dip cannot establish either condition. The diary cannot select treatment, tell you when to take a medicine, or justify starting, stopping or changing a prescription. If feelings became flat after a prescription change, bring that history to the prescriber; the page on antidepressant emotional blunting covers that separate discussion.
A diary is also vulnerable to missing data and hindsight. You may remember low mood more clearly after pain starts, or only record days when symptoms feel unusual. Mark uncertain times and include ordinary days, because an honest partial record is more useful than a polished record built from guesses.
When to stop logging and get help
Seek emergency help for a headache that starts suddenly and is extremely severe, or headache with new weakness, speech difficulty, vision loss, confusion, seizure, fever with a stiff neck, or symptoms after a head injury. These symptoms need assessment even if you already have migraine. The official migraine guidance also advises urgent assessment for an attack lasting more than 72 hours, aura lasting more than an hour, or an attack during pregnancy or soon after birth.
Arrange a clinical review when headaches change, become harder to manage, or mood symptoms persist or interfere with everyday life. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, seek prompt support; if you may act on them or cannot stay safe, contact local emergency services or urgent crisis support immediately. You do not need a completed record to ask for help.
Frequently asked questions
Can depression come before a migraine?
A low or irritable mood can occur before migraine pain, but that observation is not the same as a diagnosis of depression. Research has not established acute depressive symptoms as a dependable advance warning for everyone. Record the timing and discuss persistent or concerning mood changes with your clinician.
How long does low mood last after a migraine?
Recovery symptoms can continue after head pain ends, and their length varies. Record when the mood change began and eased rather than applying a fixed deadline to yourself. Persistent, worsening or disruptive low mood warrants clinical discussion even when it seems linked to attacks.
Should you log mood on days with no pain?
Yes, if you can manage a brief daily note, pain-free observations provide a useful comparison. Keep low-mood notes even when no attack follows. Leave missed days marked not recorded rather than assuming they were symptom-free.
Does a headache diary need a mood score?
A plain mood label and time can be sufficient for this recording method. The labels here are descriptive and do not form a depression scale. Use a validated questionnaire only as instructed or interpreted in an appropriate clinical setting.
What if you cannot tell a prodrome from a bad day?
Write what you noticed, its time and whether pain followed. Leave the explanation uncertain and keep days when it did not lead to headache. A clinician can review repeated observations alongside your wider history.
Should a depression questionnaire be dated on a migraine day?
Record the date and tell the clinician whether you were experiencing migraine symptoms. Answer according to the questionnaire’s stated recall period rather than changing the answers to compensate for one pain day. Do not delay a requested assessment because of the diary.
Bring a record that leaves room for interpretation
The useful outcome is a dated account of mood, pain, recovery and medicine use that you can discuss at a visit. Keep ordinary days, uncertain times and missing entries visible alongside the events you remember clearly. Use the record to ask a better question, while letting assessment and treatment remain with your clinician.
