FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK
 Each month, lawyerswithdepression.com Creator, Publisher and Editor In Chief Dan Lukasik addresses readers in a column with topics ranging from relevant issues to his personal experiences. We hope you find these offerings to be useful, insightful and, most of all, uplifting.
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WHY I CREATED THIS SITE
Depression is often a very isolating experience - - even when the depressed person has a supportive and loving group of people to rely on.
In my own life, I often found relief in reading books about depression, spirituality or health and trying to relate the wisdom in those books to my own life as a lawyer.
When I searched on-line for materials to read that would support me in my attempt to cope with depression and my law practice, what I found was sometimes helpful, but in the end, not sufficient.
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LWD IN THE NEWS
The Law's Occupational Hazard
Lawyerswithdepression.com founder Dan Lukasik authored this article for thecompletelawyer.com entitled Depression Is The Law's Occupational Hazard.
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Seminar Receives Praise
The successful Erie County Bar Association seminar, Effective Lawyering: Dealing with the Stresses and Strains of Today's Law Practice, spearheaded by lawyerswithdepression.com creator Dan Lukasik is profiled in this piece from The Daily Record.
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Struggling Against Sadness
This article from the American Bar Association profiles lawyerswithdepression.com, highlighting the sites many features and accompanying efforts to reach out to the legal community. Read the story
Law School Honors Grads
From the Buffalo Law Journal, the state University of New York at Buffalo Law School honors five grads and the newly appointed Dean with the Distinguished Alumni award including lawyerswithdepression.com creator Dan Lukasik. Read the story
When Things Become Too Much
This article from the Niagara Gazette takes a look at the tendency for overachievers to go into the field of law and the inherent danger of handling stress by burying themselves in work.
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Erasing The Stigma
This story from the New York Law Journal explores the stigma surrounding attorney depression and the role that lawyerswithdepression.com plays in combating that stigma. Read the story
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FEATURED ARTICLES
 Psychiatric Pills And Professional Identities
David A. Karp, Ph.D. is a professor of sociology at Boston College and is the author of two books, Is it Me or My Meds? and Speaking of Sadness.
My most recent book on mental illness entitled, Is It Me or My Meds? explores questions about identity. It focuses on the connections between pills and personhood. All drugs, legal or illegal, require people to continually justify their use and evaluate their consequences. Certainly every drug has the potential to affect mood and cognition. However I maintain that psychiatric medications are qualitatively different from other medications. In contrast to other medications, psychotropic drugs have as their purpose the transformation of people’s moods, feelings and perceptions.
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 Callings And Shoutings
Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life—a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, Quality Paperback Books and the One Spirit Book Club—has written about callings for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Psychology Today, and others. A full-time speaker and seminar leader in the business, educational and human-potential arenas, he travels extensively offering callings workshops and lectures. His website is www.gregglevoy.com.
It is hard to perform when you have voices shouting mutinies inside your head, cross-examining the fundamental values and premises of what you’ve built—your career, your sense of mission, your clarity about whether you want to grow your practice, maintain it, scale it back or quit it altogether. Voices that undermine your resolve, undo your best-laid plans and make sure that the only law you end up practicing with any efficiency is Murphy’s law.
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 Why Are Lawyers So Depressed?
Susan Daicoff is an Associate Professor of Law at Florida Coastal School of Law. She is a lawyer and professional psychotherapist. For the past decade, she has been researching and writing on the psychology of lawyers, lawyer personality, lawyer distress and dissatisfaction. She is the author of the book, Lawyer Know Thyself.
Why are so many lawyers depressed? Larry Krieger and Ken Sheldon’s research indicates that the loss of one’s intrinsic values is responsible for the dramatic increase in depression and lowered sense of well being among law students seen in the first year of law school. I often think of this at the “ski slope” graphic representation of the excellent Andy Benjamin, et al. studies done in the 1980's and 1990's on depression in law students.
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  "Depression: Nature and Nurture"
The Down and Up Show, depressionisreal.com: Aired March 27, 2008
Dr. Reef Karim speaks with Dr. Gerald Haeffel, an Assistant Professor of the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame about his recent study published in Psychological Science which discusses how depression is caused by both nature and nurture.
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"The Genetics Of Depression"
The Down and Up Show, depressionisreal.com: Aired March 20, 2008
Dr.Reef Karim speaks with Dr. Francis McMahon, Chief of the Unit on Genetics of Mood and Anxiety Disorders at The National Institute of Mental Health.
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DEPRESSION IN THE NEWS
Inflamation, Depression and Antidepressant Response This short piece from sciencedaily.com takes a look at the clinical parallels between depressive symptoms and the symptoms of certain inflamatory disorders. Read the story
Depression A Dark Secret For Men From msnbc.com, this article discusses the tendency for men to deal with depression through denial and the blaming of others. Read the story
Burning Incense May Moderate Depression This article from psychcentral.com discusses a new study from The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal which found that burning frankincense activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain that alleviate anxiety and depression. Read the story
Attorney Interrupted Law.com: Small Firm Business takes a look at the tragic story of Hermes Villarreal, a South Texas attorney who took his own life after a bout with acute depression Read the story
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