Dr. Cliff Arnall based his findings that January 21st will be the most depressing day on a special formula that he developed, which takes into account 3 factors; the weather, failed new years resolutions and consumer debt from holiday spending. However, a writer over at the Time website has findings of his own.
Bill Tancer, a columnist at Time, believes that in order to get a better estimation of what the most depressing day is we only have to look to search engine behavior. Tancer’s logic is thus;
In the digital age we’re likely to turn to search engines just as often as we would confide in friends and medical professionals to gauge our psychological state. If we think we’re suffering from a real bout of the blues or a mental crisis, we’re likely to Google the symptoms or find a chat group in the hopes of performing a self-diagnosis.
Based on this logic, Tancer’s estimation of the most depressing day of the year is sometime in mid-November. Tancer also believes further evidence of more people being depressed lies in the traffic to popular depression treatment sites, such as Lexapro, Paxil and Cymbalta. According to his findings, the traffic to these sites spikes in late October and early November, thus further bolstering his estimation.
I tend to agree more with the logic that Tancer used to calculate his estimation of the most depressing time period. While I would like to say that we will know definitively which gentleman was right after January 21st, it’s likely that we will only be able to know how many people came in for treatment of their depression during these times and not capture the truest picture of the entire population of depressed individuals, since surely some people who are depressed do not seek treatment. However, I can see how these theories might be useful for hospitals and other health care providers to determine proper staffing etc. during these peak times.
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9 Comments to
“Will January 21st be the “Most Depressing Day of the Year”?”
One difference between the two is that what is winter time in the northern hemisphere is, of course, summer time in the southern hemisphere. And yet the internet is a fairly international forum (with the southern hemisphere having higher online access rates per head of population, I believe).
Not sure if this f’s things up, rather…
Greetings, this post is interesting and have a sense. Of course, alexandra_k is right, and and there is difference between the people behavior in the northern and southern hemisphere. Nevertheless, as I understand, the talk in article is about people in the northern hemisphere.
The weather and seasons take affect on the people mood. The spring is a birth, creation of the life, that why the spring gives to every of us the positive mood. And if anyone have a depression, he (or she) takes pass through it easy. The late autumn associates with the near death, in my opinion. Birth and death. Spring and autumn. The autumn. Cold wind, rain, gray sky, fallen leaves and the sun almost absent. So is November in the northern semisphere. That why I agreed with the Tancer estimation.
But, of course, the day of Jenuary 21st may be a very depressing day, because the reasons are objective.
Have a nice dave,
Nicolas Claus
I didn’t think that the web traffic statistics were differentiating between northern and southern hemisphere users. As such, it might be a more global assessment rather than something that is northern hemisphere specific. Weather is northern hemisphere specific - but consumer debt around the holiday period and failed new years resolutions aren’t. Except in (say) china where it isn’t customary to make new years resolutions… When it comes to predicting consumer demand in the northern hemisphere, one might be better off generalizing from a (representative) northern hemisphere sample… E.g., by going with the health statistics (if available) over the past however many years…
January 21st was one of the best days I’ve ever had - despite the fact that midterms just started that day …
January 21st was quite an interesting day for me, but most of my friends seemed depressed. This is a good article and for some people it may have been true, whereas in November there may or may not be high numbers of depressed people.
its a very auspicious and a day where future prides will do and born…it will be a day to remember for good or the best
For the southern hemisphere most depressing should be august 5 
It is my 30th birthday on Jan 21st 2009. No one will want to celebrate with me!
That’s my birthday. I’m going to have to change it.
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