Hope Counts: One Lawyer With Depression’s Testimony

I am a lawyer, as many of you.

I went to law school and passed the bar exam like you.

I also struggle with depression like too many of you,  as well.

A new study by the American Bar Association and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation found that twenty-eight percent of over 12,825 practicing lawyers polled reported a problem with depression.  This is over three times the rate found in the general population. When put in perspective, of the 1.2 million attorneys in this country, over 336,000 reported symptoms of clinical depression.

Levels of stress, anxiety, and problem drinking were also significant, with 23%, 19%, and 20.6% experiencing symptoms of stress, anxiety, and hazardous drinking, respectively.

“This is a mainstream problem in the legal profession,” said the study’s lead author, Patrick Krill, director of the Legal Professionals Program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, and a lawyer himself. “There needs to be a systemic response.”My plunge into the dark well of depression began shortly after I turned forty. I was litigating personal injury cases and the managing partner at my firm. While always under a great deal of stress slugging it out in the trenches, I always thought I could handle it.  It was just part of the deal of being a lawyer, I thought. And part of being a man.

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The numbers for mental health problems are equally troubling for law students, according to Yale News which reported that a majority of its law students reported experiencing mental health challenges at Yale Law School.  Seventy-percent of all respondents – 206 students in a 296-student sample – reported having struggled with mental health during law school.

The National Law Journal recently published a much-needed special report about the mental health of law students. It begins with the following sentence: “The numbers are disturbing: Law students suffer from depression, anxiety and substance abuse at unusually high rates.”

More than 3,000 law students from 15 law schools responded to the 2014 Survey on Student Well-Being, a study on mental health issues and alcohol and drug use that was conducted by Associate Dean David Jaffe of American Law, Professor Jerome Organ of U. St. Thomas Law, and Programming Director Katherine Bender of the Dave Nee Foundation. Eighteen percent of survey respondents said they’d been diagnosed with depression. The results of the study were stunning. More than one in six had been diagnosed with depression while in law school. Thirty-seven percent of law students screened positive for anxiety, and 14 percent of them met the definition of severe anxiety. Depression coupled with severe anxiety can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, and 22 percent of law student survey respondents reported that they were binge drinkers.

Sadly, Forty-two percent of the surveyed law students said they thought they needed help in the past year for emotional or mental health problems, but only half of that group had actually received counseling from a health professional. And only 4 percent had sought help from a health professional for drug or alcohol problems, though the survey shows a higher number reported binge drinking and drug use.

My Story

My plunge into the dark well of depression began shortly after I turned forty. I was litigating personal injury cases and the managing partner at my firm. While always under a great deal of stress slugging it out in the trenches, I always thought I could handle it.  It was just part of the deal of being a lawyer, I thought. And part of being a man.

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But something changed. I started to feel a deep sadness that wouldn’t go away.  Other symptoms began to appear. I lost my ability to concentrate and be productive at work.  Sleep became fragmented.  I was always tired, but couldn’t sleep well.  I would go to bed early and wake at 3 a.m. unable to go back to sleep. Sometimes I’d watch T.V. while my family slept. Other times, I would shower, shave, get dressed in my suit and tie and go to an all-night coffee shop. I’d wait until the sun came up and then drive to work with no one the wiser of the inner torment I was going through.

I tried to hunker down and power through my depression. But it didn’t work.  I would find myself crying as I drove home for no particular reason. I would pull into abandoned parking lots to weep.  It wasn’t sadness as I had previously experienced it, however. In the past, I had always experienced my sadness as the result of some loss or misfortune either I or someone I loved had endured.  Sometimes, I would cry, but not often. When I did, it was a release. It felt better to get it out of my system.  But now, crying was not a relief.  It only led to more crying. Later I was to learn that depression isn’t sadness as we normally think about and experience it.

Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., author of the book, “Undoing Depression,” wrote:

“The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality – the ability to experience a full range of emotions, including happiness, excitement, sadness, and grief. Depression is not an emotion itself; it’s the loss of feelings; a big heavy blanket that insulates you from the world yet hurts at the same time. It’s not sadness or grief; it’s illness.”

I got therapy and ultimately was put on medication.  This helped. As I recovered, I noticed that others found it difficult to understand what I had been through.  Over time, I began to understand that this is so because of the stigma that surrounds depression.  One poll found that forty-percent of Americans attributed depression to a failure of willpower to pull themselves out of it. Folks with depression are to blame for their plight, some thought.  This made me angry and sad at the same time.  Would they feel this way about other diseases that other were afflicted with?

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Over the past fifteen years that I’ve been dealing with depression, and yes I still struggle with it, I’ve come to know hundreds of others in our craft who suffer just like me.  I created the website lawyerswithdepression.com ten years ago as a place those in the profession could go to learn about what depression is and find support.  I hope you go to it.

Why do lawyers suffer from such high rates of depression? There’s no easy answer because depression has many causes.  Some risk factors include a family history of depression, genetics and one’s emotional experiences with their family of origin.  Lawyers seem to have a few others risks that are unique to our profession such as a pessimistic thinking style. We are, by training and experience, negative people. We are in an adversarial profession. This creates not only stress but chronic stress that has significantly negative effects on those areas of the brain associated with depression. In this sense, the legal profession creates a “perfect storm” for depression to develop.

Closing Argument

Many lawyers do not seek help for their depression.  For those who do, too often they feel ashamed of their struggle.  Lawyers are, after all, supposed to be “fixers,” not people with “problems.”  But depression can’t be “fixed” by one’s self.  You need help and support. It’s a team effort. The bottom line? You can recover from depression.

And I know this much is true: depression doesn’t have the final word in the closing arguments of the lives of those who suffer with it.

Hope does.

Are you a law student or lawyer struggling with depression? Do you need help developing a practical, constructive game plan to help you cope and recover from depression?  If so, I can help.  I created my life coaching practice specifically devoted to helping law students and lawyers who struggle with this condition.  Visit my website at www.yourdepression.com to learn more.

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2 thoughts on “Hope Counts: One Lawyer With Depression’s Testimony

  1. This post is eye-opening and rings so true! On top of what’s said here, as lawyers we are often dealing with unhappy people in unhappy circumstances. That’s how our days are spent. While this can be very rewarding when we save someone from dire legal circumstances, it can also take a big emotional toll when you have one of those weeks where the various cases you’re handling create a “perfect storm” of unhappiness–a recalcitrant client in a hotly contested probate; a relative in a legal mess; and bills coming due with cash shortfall due to being too generous with pro bono time the prior month. There’s no better feeling than helping deserving people out, but there are times that I am truly weary of fixing others’ messes.

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