Editor TLN
The blue monday it’s here. The most depressing day of the year supposedly is the third Monday in Januaryand this year the day falls January 16. Are we really more depressed? Is it scientifically proven? The reality is that the blue monday it’s just another marketing invention to empty our pockets.
It is true that this time is more prone to depression than, say, a bright summer day in the middle of vacation. There are people who affect you emotionally back to the grind after the Christmas holidays time is not goodand the accrued expenses for Christmas gifts and meals are a slab on the january cost.
But you cannot quantify something as variable and intangible as a depressive state, and turn it into a common malady that affects most people on a specific day, Blue Monday. And even less, if that day changes every year. What happens in leap years?
The history of Blue Monday
The very origin of the date already raises suspicions. The blue monday was born in an advertising campaign of the extinct travel agency Sky Travelin 2004. He commissioned psychologist Cliff Arnall to find a formula to calculate the most depressing day of the year.
Arnall generated a complex formula It was related to travel. But in 2009 she changed it to another one that took into account time, salary, days elapsed since Christmas, and intangible things like “low levels of motivation” wave “Feeling of needing to do something“.
The statement did not provide units of measure. Does time apply to the formula in days, hours, or seconds? What values are used for the “feeling of need to do something”.
A formula that mathematical experts and neuroscientists have hammered. Ben Goldacre explained in The Guardian that the equations don’t even make mathematical sense. Dean Burnett, a psychology neuroscientist at Cardiff University, called the formulas “a farce“, with “pointless measures“.
“There is no credible evidence that Blue Monday is more depressing than any other day, or even that it is the most depressing day of the year.“, says psychologist Craig Jackson in live science.
“Mortality indicators, sick leave, psychiatric morbidity and even estimates of deaths or suicide attempts do not increase on the third Monday of January, compared to other days in Januaryconfirms Professor Jackson.
What can be blue monday is a catalyst of the depression. Let everyone talk about the most depressing day of the year, people start to think about it, and negative feelings and true depression surface.
Sky Travel used the excuse of blue monday for years in his advertising campaigns, which others have copied: a depressed person is more prone to buying whims in a store, or on a trip. But don’t be fooled: the blue monday is not the most depressing day of the yearbecause this concept does not exist, nor can it be quantified.
