Blue Monday is the name given to a day in January typically the third Monday of the month said by a UK travel company, Sky Travel , to be the most depressing day of the year. The concept was first published in a press release from the company, which claimed to have calculated the date using an "equation".
It takes into account weather conditions and thus only applies to the Northern Hemisphere. Scientists have dismissed the idea as baseless pseudoscience. This date was published in a press release under the name of Cliff Arnall, who was at the time a tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, a Further Education centre attached to Cardiff University.
Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre reported that the press release was delivered substantially pre-written to a number of academics by public relations agency Porter Novelli , who offered them money to put their names to it.
Variations of the story have been repeatedly reused by other companies in press releases, with seeing Blue Monday invoked by legal firms and retailers of bottled water and alcoholic drinks. In , Arnall told The Independent newspaper that it was "never his intention to make the day sound negative", but rather "to inspire people to take action and make bold life decisions".
It was also reported that he was working with Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays , having "made it his mission to challenge some of the negative news associated with January and to debunk the melancholic mind-set of "Blue Monday"".
