10 things you might not know about BLUE MONDAY

TOMORROW marks so- called Blue Monday.

But what is it all about? Here are some facts you may not have known…

1

CLAIMED to be the most depressing day of the year, Blue Monday was first referenced in a press release by Sky Travel in 2005.

2

THE company, eager to calculate when people book their holidays, commissioned Dr Cliff Arnal, a

British psychologist, to create a formula to do just that.

3

ARNAL claimed his formula, which supposedly pinpointed the most depressing time of the year, could predict when people would book trips to sunny, happy, holiday destinations.

4

HIS theory worked out the day with the highest “depression factor” using avg temperature ( C), days since last pay ( P), days until next bank holiday ( B), avg hours of daylight ( D) and the number of nights in during the month ( N). 5

ADDING all those factors together, Arnal argued that the third Monday in January was the most depressing day of the year – and therefore the day when high numbers of people would book escapes.

6

ACCORDING to Dr Dean Burnett, a tutor at Cardiff University’s division of psychological medicine and neurosciences, “there are so many reasons to believe the Blue Monday equation is nonsense.”

7

DESPITE lending his name to the concept, Arnall himself ( above) now campaigns against the idea of Blue Monday via his Twitter account. 8

ARNALL also says, in a press release commissioned by

Wall’s ice cream, that he has calculated the happiest day of the year – in 2005, 24

June, in 2006, 23 June, in 2008, 20 June and in 2010, 18 June.

9

THE Samaritans want to turn the third Monday of January into the more positive “Brew Monday”, encouraging people to make a cup of tea and have a chat on the phone or online with those they care about. 10STEPHEN

Buckley, head of information at mental health charity Mind, said that Blue Monday campaigns often trivialise seasonal affective disorder

( SAD) which can be a serious, debilitating and potentially lifethreatening condition.