Contact our Wellbeing Team on 0800 170 1777

Beat the Monday morning blues

For most people, Monday morning can be a blue time especially during the winter months. However, new research has shown that depression, stress and anxiety may be seriously affecting many people in the UK all year round.

The research was taken off latest statistics from Google – the researchers discovered people in the UK are making 27 searches a minute for ‘depression’, 22 a minute for ‘stress’ and 21 a minute for ‘anxiety’.  This equates to one person searching ‘depression’ every two seconds in the UK.

The surprising figures show around 1,171,770 searches are made in the UK every month around ‘depression’, 939,820 around ‘stress’ and 907,620 around ‘anxiety’.

In an average month during last year, 49,500 searches were made by people wanting to take a test to see whether they were depressed.

The findings offer an insight into the mental health of the nation, following Office for National Statistics’ figures which show that more than 15 million working days per year are lost in sickness absence to stress, depression and anxiety.

In 2014 there was also a significant increase in search volumes across ‘depression’ and ‘stress’ through October, November and December, suggesting ‘Blue Monday’ isn’t limited to January.

If you’re worried about depression, you should visit your GP.  In the meantime, here are 10 top tips for beating those Monday morning blues,

Focus on the good in your life – make a list of the positive stuff.

Nostaligia is good – when we are depressed we tend to remember the bad times not the good, so get the photos out and remember the good times too.

Appreciate the small stuff – notice and enjoy the little things in life such as a crisp day, the smell of wet grass, a hot bath etc.

Get active – depression makes us lethargic so go for a walk or a swim.

Schedule – it’s easy to just stay in bed when we feel down, so avoid this by time-tabling your day, even if it is only filled with trips to the corner shop.

Avoid social media – Facebook can make us depressed as we see what amazing lives everyone else appears to have.

Remember that there are always others worse off than you – there’s nothing like social comparison to make you feel better about your own life.

Smile – the very act of smiling can make us feel happier in a kind of ‘feedback loop’, our brain notices us smiling so thinks we are happy.

Laugh – watch a funny film or programme to lift your spirits.

Get social support – getting together with a friend or two over a coffee can make the world of difference.

Recent Posts

Time to Talk Day 2022

Time to Talk day was created by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, two of the

Search our website

Copy link
Powered by Social Snap