January 21 - Depression Day

So if you were to try to answer the question of "What is the most depressing day of the year?", how would you go about it? Personally, I think they answer the question of "What is the day in which people are the most depressed?"-- I think the day that would cause people to feel the most below what they otherwise would be feeling would be the most depressing day of the year. They are different questions.

Nonetheless, how would you tackle this problem? The initial investigator cites "weather, consumer debt from holiday spending and failed New Year's resolutions" in his formula towards finding the answer, and then the author of the linked article looks at search engine behavior. Google searches of "depression," websites of developers of anti-depressants...those are the only two he mentions, but you could generate an exhaustive list that's just as viable with little effort.

Why not alcohol sales? Dips in restaurant attendance? Cell phone usage? Airline travel? All different from cyclical predictions, of course...

I think I'm going to file this under "interesting to look at but impossible to make significant headway."