Since 2005, we’ve been seeing article after article talking about Blue Monday. But who decided that the third Monday of January is the “most depressing day of the year,” and how?
Most people know about seasonal depression, a mood affection that develops during the winter or late fall months. This isn’t just a gloomy period: Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) affects many in December, January, and February.
But what about Blue Monday? In this article we look at what it is, how it’s meant to be calculated, and why there’s nothing special about this particular day, at least not according to that alleged “calculation.”
Calculating the “most depressing day of the year”: The Blue Monday equation
The Blue Monday equation supposedly uncovered the third Monday of January as the most depressing day of the year. The calculation was proposed in 2005 by psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall, described by The Guardian’s “Bad Science” columnist in 2006 as “probably the most prodigious of all producers of bogus ‘equations.'”
Dr. Arnall did not publish his findings in a scientific paper or even in a magazine. Instead, Blue Monday was first mentioned in a press release from Sky Travel.
According to Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Samar McCutcheon, Sky Travel “wanted to increase business by claiming they had found the most depressing day of the year and were hoping it would encourage customers to travel more during this time.”
The calculation proposed by Dr. Arnall appears to confirm this hypothesis. It goes as follows:
[W + (D-d)] x T^Q
M x NA
Here’s what each of these stands for:
- (W) weather;
- (D) debt;
- (d) monthly salary;
- (T) time since Christmas;
- (Q) time since failed quit attempt;
- (M) low motivational levels and
- (NA) the need to take action.
So, does the Blue Monday equation hold any water?
It does not; it doesn’t make sense in any way, especially not scientifically. As a former science columnist for The Guardian put it, the Blue Monday claim is “uberpseudoscientific” and the equation is “farcical.”
But it doesn’t take a scientist or science author to arrive at the same conclusion. For how do you quantify weather? There is no explanation. Or the “need to take action” and “motivation levels”? No scale is provided and there’s no definition for these units. And how do you combine all these and calculate the most depressing day of the year for a whole population?
“It’s like saying ‘what do you get if you combine a) 14kg of sand, b) 53°C, c) 89 mph, d) A weasel,’ to borrow the Guardian columnist’s perfectly suitable comparison.
Why is Blue Monday still popular?
Blue Monday has been around for almost 20 years, and it’s been thoroughly debunked and laughed at for just as long. Yet it’s still a popular topic in most newspapers. Sky News makes a point of writing about it almost every year, and so does the Daily Mail Online. And so are we now, but for the first — and last — time.
Whether those articles are critical of the term or embrace it wholeheartedly, they still prolong the life of a marketing stunt that lived too long. Yet the idea of a “most depressing day of the year” remains appealing.
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Maybe it’s the holidays’ stress feeding into the following days. That might be why so many consider the whole of January the most depressing month. The winter months (spring in the southern hemisphere) bring with them what’s called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or seasonal depression. The lack of sunlight, disturbed sleep, and the end of the holidays strike a mighty hit to our well-being.
As a Birmingham City University post explains, “Blue Monday fallacy may work because we want it to — we perhaps need some reasons beyond our own control to explain why we may feel so unhappy, so we can reassuringly say ‘I’m not defective — it’s society.'”
So, even if it’s manufactured by PR, Blue Monday feels real. But you don’t have to accept the sadness, no matter what any article says. Changing the weather and expanding daylight might be out of anyone’s control, but there are some things we can do. We can start by taking care of each other, for one. Maybe that will make this Monday less blue.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Featured Photo: A woman sitting and looking at the sea on a rainy day. Featured Photo Credit: Verstairse.
