Every year, the third Monday in January is supposed to be the ‘saddest day of the year.’ With the doldrums of winter in full swing, and no holidays in sight, Blue Monday can be a day of deep isolation—at least, that is what we are told. But the Blue Monday claim has no scientific basis.  Popularized during a 2005 PR campaign by a British travel agency encouraging people to book summer vacations, the ‘formula’ behind it—which takes into consideration weather, low motivation, and already-broken resolutions—has been widely criticized as pseudoscience. In other words, Blue Monday is an invented marketing gimmick—an opportunity for large corporations to sell finance courses, health supplements and travel deals to cure us of our supposed blues. 

Manufacturing imaginary problems so businesses can solve them with their products is a core feature of marketing in our consumerist age. That part is predictable. The problem is that Blue Monday takes Canada’s very real and very troubling mental health crisis, and turns it into a revenue stream. In a country where 1 in 5 people experience mental illness in a given year, this issue needs to be tackled more seriously than with a marketing campaign. 

This kind of branding doesn’t only show up in Blue Monday ads but also in corporate awareness days that ask the public to talk about mental health—all while the corporation’s everyday practices tell a different story. Blue Monday is followed closely by Bell’s Let’s Talk Day. On Jan. 21 this year, Bell once again asked Canadians to ‘take action’ on mental health. The idea of reducing stigma and encouraging conversation is commendable. But curiously, Bell’s compassion doesn’t always extend to the remaining 364 days of the year, when customers and workers are left navigating the company as it actually operates.

In July 2024, a Quebec case ordered Bell to pay $1,000 CAD  after a Montreal customer  described a “Kafkaesque” ordeal while trying to cancel his satellite television plan. One court case doesn’t define a company, but it does puncture its carefully curated image. Accurately promoting itself as a mental-health leader would require the enforcement of consistent respect in day-to-day interactions. In 2022, Bell was obligated to pay a former employee more than $120,000 CAD after a discriminatory firing connected to disability. The company has been repeatedly accused of workers’ rights violations, including not paying interns, unlawful termination, and sexist discrimination. A mental health campaign cannot be carried in good faith if it functions mainly as reputation management—compassionate branding disguising practices that prioritize control and profit.

Bell is not the only actor in this ecosystem of performative support. Blue Monday is a bigger cultural script—one that invites corporations to package distress as a personal problem, with a purchasable solution. Many companies try to take advantage of people’s anxiety and loneliness to sell them products they do not need. That may be common, but it is not harmless. 

The Canadian Association for Mental Health (CAMH) has published a Blue Monday Survival Guide, and the Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan has done the same. The coping tips themselves—sleep, movement, social support—can be helpful. But attaching them to Blue Monday plays into the capitalist self-help industry they claim to refute. CAMH even notes that there’s no scientific evidence that one specific day is uniquely depressing—yet the frame remains: Blue Monday is real enough to require a guide. 

Distress in many cases is not an individual, seasonal inconvenience—it is a structural crisis shaped by isolation, cost of living, precarious work, long waitlists, and underfunded care. It is time to change the narrative on Blue Monday and push for free, accessible mental health services to people across Quebec and Canada, rather than surface-level awareness campaigns, wellness tips, and certainly not corporate branding exercises. Consumption is not the answer to the mental health crisis. If corporations want credibility on mental health, they have to show up in everyday practices and measurable follow-through—not only in campaign messaging.