Over the next week, you’re likely to see stories about ‘Blue Monday’ in your social media feeds and in the media. They’ll say that the third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year. In 2026 that’s Monday 19 January.

It’s complete rubbish. Blue Monday was invented in 2004 by a travel company desperate for publicity to sell holidays. They got a psychologist called Cliff Arnall from Cardiff University to provide a formula to lend apparent scientific weight to their stunt, which simply recycled the age old feeling that January is thoroughly miserable after the sugar rush excitement of Christmas has disappeared.

The Guardian’s Bad Science columnist Ben Goldacre described Dr Arnall in 2011 as probably the most prodigious of all producers of bogus ‘equations’. (He had repeated his trick in 2005, with a supposed happiest day, to flog ice cream in June.) Cardiff University was apparently peeved to be associated with this pseudoscience nonsense.

Mental health charities have criticised the way labelling the third Monday in January as Blue Monday trivialises depression and mental health. As the Mental Health Foundation said in 2021, it’s important to distinguish between temporarily feeling down and depression or other ongoing mental health conditions. One of the features of our age is medicalising these temporary lows, which are a feature of everyday life, and may be eased by going for a walk, run or bike ride. (Although outdoor exercise isn’t as appealing on a stormy winter day.) In 2022, Samaritans created headlines of its own by renaming Blue Monday ‘Brew Monday’, sending volunteers to railway stations to hand out tea bags to encourage people to talk about loneliness over a cuppa.

As one woman, Sophie Edwards, told the BBC during last year’s outing for this bandwagon:

The messaging about it being the ‘most depressing day of the year’ can be daunting for people who already have a mental illness.

We all have our good and bad days and they have nothing to do with a random made-up day in January.

Ben Goldacre, in the article mentioned above, criticised Samaritans and other charities for using ‘bullshit to promote awareness of mental health issues’. But psychologist Philip Clarke from the University of Derby acknowledged that ‘… Blue Monday is getting people having those difficult conversations about depression and anxiety and what you can actually do to help with that. I think that’s a really strong benefit that comes with it.’

As a PR person for over 35 years, I recognise the lure of the quick survey or stunt to create headlines. I’m ashamed to admit that in 1997 I even ran a Valentine’s Day story about how pensions were playing a big part in Britons’ choice of a partner. That, unsurprisingly, was for a pension company. But the idea wasn’t so ridiculous. The following year I met the woman who became my wife in 2003. I soon discovered that Karen had always taken saving for a pension very seriously…