What’s the most depressing day of the year? The day you have depression #bluemonday

blue wall

A post from our Project Manager Rosie McIntosh @rosiehopes

It’s become  tradition to fear “Blue Monday”, the third Monday of January, which apparently is the most depressing day of the year. It makes sense.  Over Christmas we’ve spent all our money, gained weight, drunk too much and the weather’s rubbish. Sounds like a recipe for depression.

Except that it’s made up. Blue Monday is, at best, a myth and at worst a shameless marketing ploy that exploits low mood to sell anything from holidays to diet pills. Blue Monday started life as a press release from a travel company and has been absorbed into our culture as  fact. In truth, there’s not much evidence that depressionrates are higher in winter than summer- and there’s certainly no scientific formula for calculating the most depressing day.  If you want to know more about the science @BenGoldacre   has written at length on this subject. 

Depression is an illness. Suggesting that it’s just feeling low after Christmas belittles that. Those of us who have faced it manage to feel depressed without any reason at all. In fact, being asked to justify it can be distressing. As @StephenFry said:

“You may say, ‘How can anybody who’s got it all be so stupid as to want to end it all?’ That’s the point, there is no ‘why?’ That’s not the right question. There is no reason. If there was reason for it, you could reason someone out of it.”

The most depressing day of the year isn’t Blue Monday. It’s the day that you have depression.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand why mental health charities are happy to jump on Blue Monday. It gets people talking about mental wellbeing, and that’s a good thing, right?

Well maybe, but it’s no reason to abandon a commitment to the truth. And it could even be harmful. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of suggestion and the role of what Ben Goldacre (again) calls “nocebo” , the evil twin of placebo. Being told it’s a depressing day, especially by organisations that present themselves as authorities,  might even make us feel worse.

So, let’s not do it. Let’s just accept that January 19 2015 will be a day like any other. Some of us will be depressed. Some won’t. That’s about as much as we can say.

 

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