Lawyers with Depression Archives - Lawyers With Depression

Secondary Trauma in the Law: An Interview with Expert Dawn D’Amico, Ph.D.

This podcast interview features my conversation with Dr. Dawn D’Amico, a psychotherapist, educator, and expert on secondary trauma in the legal profession. She is the author of the recently published book “Trauma and Well-Being Among Legal Professionals” and a companion workbook.

Secondary trauma is caused by witnessing another individual’s trauma experience or hearing his or her trauma narrative. Legal professionals are exposed to harrowing stories in courtrooms across the country, and these narratives often have a lasting psychological impact which may result in anxiety, depression, and suicide. In this interview, Dr. D’Amico goes into greater detail about secondary trauma and offers some ideas and tools to help those who struggle better cope with these issues.

Dr. D’Amico has given keynote speakers and seminars around the country and internationally. For more information on her background, services, and incredible work, visit her website.

True Stories: A Woman Lawyer Speaks Up About Her Anxiety

“True Stories” is a series of guest blogs I am running. Below, a woman gives her anonymous account of developing clinical anxiety during law school and how she finally decided to get help and take care of herself.

I am a woman, an attorney, and someone who happens to struggle with clinical anxiety.

It started in law school. At first, I thought it was just the jitters from being in a fishbowl of super-competitive overachievers like me. This was Cornell Law School, after all. What did I expect?

But as my first year of law school progressed, my anxiety when from background noise to the forefront in my life. I had panic attacks, I often couldn’t sleep, and I just felt wired all the time. It seemed to fuel my drive to succeed, and I over-prepared for everything, often reading a case note four or five times. I never talked about my struggles with anyone that first year.

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Managing Depression: Podcast Interview with Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg, Author of “The Ten

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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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Love in Times of COVID-19

Think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself. “Love in Times of Cholera” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Six feet apart. 72 inches. The wingspan of a bald eagle.

The distance meant to protect us physically has harmed many psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. As Governor Andrew Cuomo recently put it, “People are struggling with the emotions as much as they are struggling with the economics.” The emotions vary in content and intensity: anxious, depressed, bored, and all that flows from couped-uped-ness, from mild to griddle hot.

Then there’s loneliness.

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Bottoms Up: My Drunk Dad, My Depression

My dad was an alcoholic.

He died at age 56 from too much drinking. Almost 40 years ago.

I was 19 at the time, a sophomore at a local state college. I lived upstairs from my Polish grandma who, was a big woman with arms as strong as an elephant’s trunk.

One morning, my Aunt Clara, who, with her husband Eddie (who was genuinely cross-eyed), lived with grandma downstairs, came up to tell me, “Your father died today.”

I had never heard my dad called “father.” It sounded formal, like, “The President of the United States died today.”

My dad had been ill for months. The year he died, 1981, Hospice wasn’t around. Most people, as sick as my dad with cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, met their end in the hospital.

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Father’s Day Reflections

I’ve written about the tough times I had growing up with my Dad in “Our Parents, Our Depression.”

My Dad died almost forty years ago when I was nineteen. A long time has passed. But the pain of my childhood still lives within me. That experience led to my depression when I hit forty.

Its shadow has dimmed, yes. I have worked hard to let it go and overcome it. And I think I’ve done a great job. It isn’t so much the abuse I recall anymore. But the loss of what could have been us as father and son.

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Be Smart About How You Use Your Smartphone: Your Mental Health Is On The Line

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party popper of our lives. It interrupts our story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to our office on the cellphone. – Steven Spielberg

My daughter in college, like most of her generation, seems addicted to her smartphone. She pulls it out of her back pocket like a gunslinger from the wild west.

Not necessarily talking on it, but texting. All the time. Every day. Like all her friends. When not pecking away, they’re on their laptops watching YouTube videos (no T.V., please!) or surfing the web on their mental boogie boards.

I like to think that I am not addicted to my phone. And I guess, by comparison, to my 19-year old daughter, I’m am not. I am on it about 2-hours per day. The average teenager spends about 9 hours a day consuming social media and music on their phones – often while doing other activities like studying for school. And anxiety and depression rates are skyrocketing since the introduction of smartphones.

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Can Creativity Cure Depression? An Interview With Dr. Carrie Barron

Dr. Carrie Barron, a board-certified psychiatrist/psychoanalyst on the clinical faculty of the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons 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 level of stress has gone up 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 think, especially for children, we’re in a striving, ambitious, be productive all the time mentality – for children and adults. We need to play, we need to hangout, we need to have spontaneous time. I think spontaneous thought does a lot for alleviating depression and anxiety.

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Do You Need To Take Medication For Your Depression?

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Eve Wood, a psychiatrist who treats lawyers, judges, and law students dealing with depression, anxiety, burnout or extreme stress.

Do you find yourself wondering if you need to be on medications for depression, or hoping you can stop them? If so, you are not alone!

In 1980, Americans filled 30 million prescriptions for antidepressants, and in 2010, 30 years later, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants filled had risen to 264 million in a year!

Increasing numbers of attorneys are being diagnosed with and treated for depression. According to the 2017 report of the National Task for on Lawyer Well-Being, …of nearly 13,000 currently practicing lawyers…approximately 28 percent, 19 percent, and 23 percent are struggling with some level of depression, anxiety, and stress, respectively.

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Lawyers Rank Highest on ‘Loneliness Scale’, Study Finds

The Washington Post reported that Lawyers ‘outranked’ other professionals on a ‘loneliness scale’ in a survey of more than 1,600 workers, in which they are asked 20 loneliness related questions. Read more here.