Research published last year in the Journal of Positive Psychology also suggests there is nothing especially bad about Mondays. 340,000 people took part in a phone poll, and although in general people reported feeling better on Fridays, there were no differences between any other weekdays. This study did rely on people correctly remembering how they had felt the previous day, but it suggests that a trying Thursday can be just as bad as a miserable Monday.
So, not only does Blue Monday appear to be a myth, but so does the idea that we don’t like Mondays in general. And yet there’s no doubt that we’ll see those Blue Monday headlines again. I’m waiting to see how many years this persists for. It has been suggested that at least it gets people talking about depression, but I’m not convinced that it really gets us discussing our mental health or what help might be out there. I wonder whether all it does is to make us think January is bad, when in fact we were doing OK.
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