Give up the gimmick | Is it time HR finally ditched 'Blue Monday' for good?

For many years now, HR has known the truth about Blue Monday. The formula behind it has been widely debunked, the science doesn’t hold up, and the idea of crowning a single Monday in January as “the most depressing day of the year” has long since been exposed as a marketing construct to sell package holidays, rather than a medical or psychological reality.

And yet, every January, Blue Monday rolls back into view. Not because anyone genuinely believes it, but because it has become a convenient hook. A moment to pause and talk about mental wellbeing. A line in the sand that allows organisations to say: we’re acknowledging this, and we care.

For years, that contradiction has sat comfortably enough. Blue Monday may be nonsense, the thinking goes, but if it opens the door to important conversations, then perhaps it still serves a purpose.

This year, it feels worth asking whether that compromise still makes sense. If we already accept that Blue Monday is pseudoscience, is continuing to reference it actually helping the long-term cause of workplace wellbeing, or quietly undermining it?

And yes, there is a certain irony in publishing yet another Blue Monday piece that argues the concept itself has long since run its course - but that tension is precisely why it is worth revisiting.