Don’t let the Blue Monday hype get you down – it’s just another day

I’m beginning to feel a bit sorry for January. It gets such bad press, don’t you think? It’s gloomy, dark, cold and everyone’s skint because of Christmas. But is that January’s fault? Did it ask to be positioned so quickly after the annual feast of overindulgence, when everyone goes out of their minds with mulled wine and thinks it’s perfectly fine to live on mince pies and brandy butter for 12 days straight? Meanwhile, the only thing that January is known for is abstinence, and the fact it contains the most depressing day of the year: so-called Blue Monday, which happens to fall on the third Monday of the month.

As a journalist, you know Blue Monday is approaching because of the sense of despair that builds with each press release that falls into your inbox, advertising various ways to get through it. “Beat Blue Monday with mushroom tea!” writes one company. “Make it a really Blue Monday with these special bedroom toys!” exclaims another. I listlessly delete each missive, and take in vain the name of the man who created this PR term, back in 2004, as a way to sell holidays.

Cliff Arnell. That’s his name. That’s the man who created this seemingly unstoppable monster, which has the effect of reducing depression to a silly marketing gimmick and of suggesting that mental illness can somehow be shrugged off by a week on the beach or the day simply changing to Tuesday. Arnell is a psychologist, who in 2004 was asked by a holiday company to come up with a “scientific formula” that would enable them to work out the most depressing day of the year. Arnell, no doubt encouraged by pound signs rather than scientific rigour, did as he was asked, and here we all are, 20 years later, still having to contend with mental health being used by companies as a quick way to increase profits.

To be fair to Arnell, the speed at which we have happily adopted this marketing term probably says a lot about why there are increasing levels of anxiety and depression in the first place: a society that widely believes it can buy its way to a good mood is never going to be in prime mental health. And while there are links between exposure to daylight and mood, I think it’s important to say that, for most people, depression is far more complicated than a GCSE project in pathetic fallacy.

It happens all year round, for a variety of reasons that usually have nothing whatsoever to do with not being able to go on holiday. Depression in July is as awful as depression in January, and made no better by the ridiculous notion that sunshine and summer days should be enough to buoy your mood. The belief that the darkness of winter contributes to depression is supposed to be comforting, but actually it only makes things worse for us all, because it encourages negative thinking.

As the late, great Louise Hay wrote in her seminal self-help book You Can Heal Your Life: “Are you one of the many people who will get up in the morning, see that it’s raining, and say ‘Oh, what a lousy day’? It is not a lousy day. It is only a wet day. If we wear the appropriate clothing and change our attitude, we can have a lot of rainy day fun. If it really is our belief that rainy days are lousy days, then we will always greet rain with a sinking heart. We will fight the day rather than flow with what is happening in the moment.”

So in that spirit: is today really the most depressing day of the year, simply because it happens to be the third Monday in January? Or is it just a day like any other, with 24 hours in it – 24 hours that are yours to do as you want with them? I feel a bit brighter when I think like this, I have to say. And as I’ve gotten older, not only have I realised that my wellbeing isn’t dependent on the time of the year – it’s not even always that fixed on any given day. My internal weather is always changing. Forget about four seasons in one day: sometimes, I’ve cycled through them all by 11am.

If you’re feeling blue today, it might in part be because you live in a society that has reduced mental health to a marketing gimmick, in order to sell holidays. Or it might be because you have a serious illness that deserves proper treatment, rather than mushroom tea and vibrators. Whatever the case, I hope you remember that you are not alone – and that much like weather, this too shall pass.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then enjoy 1 year for just $9 with our US-exclusive offer.