depression Archives - Lawyers With Depression

Silent Struggles: Gendered Pressures on Male Lawyers Contribute to Depression

This guest blog is written by Shebna N. Osanmoh, PMHNP-BC, a board-certified psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner affiliated with Savant Care, Los Altos, CA, a mental health clinic.

The legal profession is known for long hours, adversarial culture, and high stakes. While all lawyers are vulnerable to mental health issues, an often overlooked group may be suffering in silence—mainly male lawyers.

There’s been increasing awareness of mental health in the legal field, but how depression shows up and is managed in men has been underexamined. This silence is driven by gender expectations, social stigma, and professional pressures, and can lead to serious consequences.

The Silent Burden of Stoicism

From their first year in law school, male lawyers are conditioned to demonstrate competence, assertiveness, and composure. They are trained to suppress their emotions in the courtroom, stay calm under pressure, and base their decisions on logic rather than feelings. These traits are valued professionally, but they can be harmful personally.

The cultural script for male lawyers dictates that they must maintain a strong image at all times. Emotional vulnerability? That’s a weakness. Needing support? It’s a sign you can’t handle the heat. This idealized version of the male lawyer —stoic, confident, and endlessly resilient —leaves little room for authentic emotional experience.

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Justice for the Mind: The Mental Health Crisis Among Indian Lawyers

This is a guest blog from attorney, Amarbir Singh Shergill, a Private Legal Practitioner in the Hon’ble Punjab and Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, India since 2019. He earned his B.A.LLB (Hons.) and LLM (Criminology) from Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. His website, The Half Said Blog, is a space where he “confront[s] the difficult, the unspoken, and the complex issues that shape our lives but rarely get the attention they deserve from mental health & wellbeing and societal issues to love & relationships.”

INTRODUCTION

Millions of lawyers in India rush to court every day in the hope that today will be different, praying to their respective deities that a client will walk through their door—if they are privileged enough to have a chamber—or simply bump into someone needing legal advice. And each day, a majority of them return home with the hope that perhaps tomorrow will be different, repeating the same exercise of faith in perpetuity.

This routine of endless hope is not just a professional challenge but an emotional burden. It is the slow yet sure realization that their aspirations might never materialize. The Indian legal system, festered with rewards for the privileged and resourceful, amplifies this harsh reality. This realization itself triggers a spiral of doubt, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, and mental health challenges.

REWARDING PRIVILIGE VERSUS MERIT

As a fresh graduate from law school, I was full of zeal to aid the delivery of justice and use the courtroom to make law and justice accessible to those in need. Guided by principles such as “the law is equal to all,” I toiled during my initial years as a Junior Associate, holding onto the hope that my time would come.

Long working days were the norm. Often working for a minimum of 12 hours, I would stagger home to my rented accommodation, too tired to arrange dinner at times. Despite my efforts, it was evident that my professional value far outweighed my remuneration.

The hope of achieving success through hard work began to falter as I confronted the reality of the deeply ingrained nepotism and preferential treatment that permeates the legal profession. Sons and daughters of second- and third-generation lawyers or judges were effortlessly granted opportunities. My unwavering conviction to work hard gave way to doubts, leading to an internal battle of low self-esteem and self-worth.

This discrepancy in opportunity raises profound questions about equity in the profession. Does merit even stand a chance? And if not, what does this signify for the countless lawyers who do not come from privilege?

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One Therapist’s Take on Lawyer Addiction & Mental Health

This is a guest blog by Nicole Roder, LCSW-C, a bilingual DBT therapist in Bethesda, MD, certified by the DBT-Linehan Board of Certification. She is intensively trained in DBT, DBT prolonged exposure for PTSD, DBT for parents, couples, and families, and DBT for substance use disorders. In her practice, she treats adults and adolescents with BPD, PTSD, DMDD, SUD, and related disorders.

The legal profession is renowned for its rigorous demands and high-pressure environment. Attorneys often face long working hours, tight deadlines, and the stress of high-stakes cases. Pursuing success in this competitive field requires a delicate balance between ambition and integrity, with many lawyers dedicating years to honing their skills and cultivating key relationships. Lawyers have to hustle and compete for clients and recognition. They must constantly learn and stay updated on changing laws and legal trends. This relentless pace and pressure can take a significant toll on attorneys’ mental and physical health, making it a profession where the risk of substance abuse is notably high.

As a therapist who treats addictions, I have seen many people who use alcohol to cope with high-stress jobs. I have also seen people suffer terrible losses when that coping mechanism becomes an addiction. Fortunately, there are well-researched treatments that can help attorneys overcome addiction. Let’s take a look at the data on addiction among lawyers, the consequences of addiction, and some resources that might help overcome the problem.

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Leading a Mindful Life in the Law: An Interview with Lawyer and Meditation Teacher, Courtney Schulnick

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This podcast features my interview with Courtney Schulnick, Esq., a lawyer and certified mindfulness educator. She is Special Counsel at the law firm of Marshall Dennehey in Philadelphia, defending individuals and businesses in casualty matters in the local, state, and federal courts. She holds a law degree from the Rutgers School of Law and earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

The stress and anxiety she experienced led to her enrollment in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program at the Myrna Brind Center for Mindfulness at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadephia. Now a certified trainer, Courtney gives presentations at law firms, law schools, and other organizations. You can learn more about her and her services on her website.

Courtney weaves together the practice of mindfulness into her daily life as a lawyer, wife, and mother of three young boys. All lawyers seek greater work/life balance, and mindfulness is a path toward that goal. Sincere, kind, and insightful, everyone who listens to Courtney will be encouraged to integrate mindfulness into their lives.

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Can Creativity Help You Heal Depression? An Interview with Psychiatrist, Dr. Carrie Barron

Dr. Carrie Barron is a board-certified psychiatrist on the Columbia College of Physicians an Surgeons clinical faculty who also has a private practice in New York City. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, won several academic awards, and presented original works related to creativity and self-expression at national meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Along with her husband, Alton Barron, M.D., a hand and shoulder surgeon, she co-authored the book The Creativity Cure: How to Build Happiness with Your Own Two Hands.

Dan:

Why is depression such a problem in our culture?

Carrie:

I think the stress level has increased enormously because we have so much to do, and we’re on twenty-four hours a day. So I think because of technology, which offers us so many great things but gives us much to do. I think that’s part of it. I also believe, especially for children, we’re in a striving, ambitious, productive time mentality – for children and adults. We need to play, we need to hang out, we need to have spontaneous time. I think spontaneous thought does a lot for alleviating depression and anxiety.

Dan:

We have so many different words in our culture for unpleasant experiences. We might say things like, “I’m sad,” “I’m burnt-out,” “I’m stressed out,” or “I’m depressed.” But what is the difference in your mind, as a clinician, between sadness, say, and depression?

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Depression as a Loss of Heart

This article was written by John Welwood, an American clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, teacher, and author, known for integrating psychological and spiritual concepts. He died in 2019. He wrote eight books, including Challenge of the Heart (1985), Journey of the Heart (1990), and Love and Awakening (1996). Trained in existential psychology, Welwood earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Chicago.

Depression is one of the most common problems in modern society. It appears in chronic low-grade forms that can drain a person’s energy and in more acute forms that can be completely debilitating. Our materialistic culture breeds depression by promoting distorted and unattainable goals for human life. And our commonly held psychological theories make it hard for people to make direct contact with depression as a living experience, by framing it as an objective “mental disorder” to be quickly eliminated. The current treatments of choice — drugs, cognitive restructuring, or behavioral retraining — are primarily technical, and often keep depression at arm’s length. However, in order to help people with depression, we must see how they create and maintain this state of mind in their moment-to-moment experience. This will help us understand depression not merely as an affliction, but as an opportunity to relate to one’s life situation more honestly and directly.

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NPR News: “Patients say keto diet helps with their mental illness. Science is racing to understand.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/27/1227062470/keto-ketogenic-diet-mental-illness-bipolar-depression

Treating Lawyers with Depression: One Psychologist’s Top 10 Tips

Here is an interview I did with Dr. Tyger Latham, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Washington, D.C. and the Commonwealth of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. George Washington University.

What is depression?

Depression is a mental health disorder that affects roughly 10 to 15 percent of the general population. According to the DSM, the manual used by psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose depression, a person is diagnosed with depression if she/he experiences depressed mood, along with several other related symptoms, for a minimum of 2 weeks. Some of these other symptoms include: disrupted sleep; diminished energy; changes in appetite or weight; difficulties with concentration; restlessness or lethargy; feelings of guilt, worthless, and helplessness; and, in extreme cases, thoughts of death or suicide. This is the medical definition of depression. However, this definition fails to capture the experience of what it’s like to be depressed. I think Paul Simon has described depression best when he wrote: “Hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island. And a rock feels no pain; and an island never cries.”

Have you treated many law students, lawyers and judges for it?

At any one time, I would say about a third of my practice is comprised of lawyers or law students, of which a large majority suffer from depression or some related mood disorder such as persistent depressive disorder or bipolar disorder.

Can you tell us what kind of issues concerning depression lawyers come to you for? (E.g. problems on job, marital)

As with all of my clients, I find that lawyers come to therapy for a myriad of reasons, including depression. In the case of lawyers, however, the practice of law often serves as a backdrop for their presenting concerns. I have yet to work with an attorney whose work was not adversely affected by their depression. In fact, many lawyers who are diagnosed with depression only become aware of it after it begins to affect their productivity. These lawyers might complain of being unable to concentrate; feeling indifferent or apathetic about their work; withdrawing from colleagues; or, in some cases, they talk with me about feeling burned-out or they might share fantasies of leaving the practice of law altogether. All of these symptoms can be associated with depression and when taken together they build a strong case for clinical depression.

Attorneys will often employ a number of coping strategies – some adaptive, others not-so-adaptive – to deal with their depression. Most attorneys are accustom to working long hours, so I often see many attorneys with depression pour themselves into their work as a way to escape. I’ve also worked with a number of attorneys who have resorted to alcohol and drugs as a way of managing their symptoms. While I wouldn’t say all attorneys who are depressed abuse alcohol and drugs, the majority of attorneys who abuse alcohol and drugs almost always suffer from some form of a mood disorder like depression, bipolar, or anxiety.

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Unpacking Depression: An Interview with Psychologist Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg

Today’s guest is Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg. Dr. Wehrenberg is a clinical psychologist in Naperville, Illinois. She is the author of six books on the treatment of anxiety and depression published by W.W. Norton, including, “The Ten Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques: Understanding How Your Brain Makes You Depressed and What You Can Do to Change It” and “Anxiety + Depression: Effective Treatment of the Big Two Co-Occurring Disorders.” An international trainer of mental health professionals, Dr. Wehrenberg coaches people with anxiety via the internet and phone. She’s a frequent contributor to the award-winning magazine, Psychotherapy Networker and she blogs on depression for the magazine Psychology Today.

Dan:

What is the difference between sadness and depression and why do people confuse the two so often?

Dr. Wehrenberg:

Because depression comprises sadness. Sadness is a response to a specific situation in which we usually have some kind of loss. The loss of a self-esteem, a loss of a loved one, the loss of a desired goal. Depression is really more about the energy – whether it’s mental energy or physical energy – to make an effective response. So, sadness is an appropriate and transient emotion, but depression sticks around and affects all of our daily behaviors and interactions.

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