Dr Mark Widdowson, Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Salford and registered psychotherapist, said:
“By January, it’s been dark for a long time, it’s cold, people spent all their money over Christmas, and they might have made New Year’s resolutions they’ve not kept. Certainly I’ve found over the years that you see an increase in people wanting therapy from mid-January until about Easter.
“But, while there is a grain of truth in Blue Monday, the way it’s described in the media is completely overblown. Just because there’s a potential perfect storm of factors doesn’t mean that on one particular day someone will feel miserable.
“To try and limit our problems to one day is a huge oversimplification, and people’s lives are a lot more complicated than that. If someone feels down for a period of a couple of weeks, there’s probably a lot more they should be doing than blaming it on Blue Monday.”
Blue Monday occurs on Monday 16 January 2017.
