Blue Monday

A Note on “Blue Monday”

Many of you may well have read various news stories relating to the idea of “Blue Monday”. Simply put: today is the day we, as a nation, get terribly depressed. Such a fact came from the rigorous scientific prowess of Sky Travel, who had no other motivation to perpetrate the fact than general helpfulness, so that was nice of them. Now that we all knew when we were gonna get depressed, we could book a holiday to avoid it, perhaps fly out to somewhere hot, courtesy of...oh, I dunno....Sky Travel? 

Of course Blue Monday is codswallop, folly or straight up nonsense, depending on your favourite colloquialism. For those who want to devour the tasty tasty science, Ben Goldacre has written a brilliant piece on the issue.

The main issue is that depression, whichever form it takes, is not something that just shows up, steals all your tea and biscuits (which is British for “happiness”) and then vanishes the next day, leaving you glad you won't have to go through that for a year. Sure, people have bad days, where every conceivable thing goes wrong, and these can be difficult, but they do not occur to everybody on the same day.

Such thinking can be dangerous. Those with serious conditions can be brushed off with “it's just Blue Monday”, or “it's January, everyone gets a bit sad in January”.

The truth is, the “everybody goes through that, you'll get over it”attitude is not conductive to a person's health. Often the winter can be times of great mental distress, with the lack of natural light and an increase in cold temperatures resulting in an overall downward trend of social interaction.

Those experiencing a decrease in mood should not just wait it out. There are options available to everyone, especially to students who can take advantage of free counselling and services such as Nightline.

The important thing here is to know that you do not have to blame depression on "just that time of year", regardless of what the patronising "Blue Monday" brigade would have you believe.