8 interesting facts about Blue Monday! (List)

You can read them here: 1. Blue Monday is a name given to a day in January (typically the third Monday of the month) reported to be the most depressing day of the year.

2. The concept was first publicised as part of a 2005 press release from holiday company Sky Travel which claimed to have calculated the date using an equation.

3. The idea is considered pseudoscience,

4. This date was published in a press release under the name of Cliff Arnall, at the time a tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, a Further Education centre attached to Cardiff University.

5. Variations of the story have been repeatedly reused by other companies in press releases, with 2014 seeing Blue Monday invoked by legal firms and retailers of bottled water and alcoholic drinks.

6. The date is generally reported as falling on the third Monday in January, but also on the second or fourth Monday, or the Monday of the last full week of January.

7. The reason that Blue Monday is the third Monday of January is because the weather is terrible, the highs of Christmas are replaced by the lows of credit card bills and the days still seem way too short.

8. The idea of Blue Monday is something that is pounced upon by charities and health organisations to spread key messages about mental health – it may be a questionable concept but it does at least have some worthy by-products.