This is my first blog entry. I am the creator of the website Lawyers with Depression. I created it two years ago. I have been a lawyer for over twenty years and have suffered from depression for the past seven. I created the site to create a virtual home for lawyers all across America who struggle with depression. I went looking for such a home on my computer two years ago and couldn’t find one – – so I built one.
Since it was launched, I have heard from thousands of lawyers, judges and law students about their battles with depression. It is my hope that this blog will be a good supplement to the website. It will offer frequent commentary, thoughts, observations and insights about working as a lawyer and dealing with depression.
The launch of this blog starts on a very sad note indeed.I was interviewed for a piece in The National Law Journal which appeared today.
Reports of Suicides Point to Job Stress – The National Law Journal
The interview concerned the rash of lawyer suicides. I have known or spoken to many lawyers who have either thought about suicide or attempted it. Unfortunately, there are attorneys in my own community who took their lives when the pain got too deep.
One of them was a dashing man who taught me trial technique years ago. He was a pillar of our legal community and a person of integrity. After a string of stressful events, he slit his wrists in a bathtub. Why people commit suicide is a complicated question.
For an excellent discussion of the issue, the best book I have ever read is Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide by psychiatrist, Kay Redfield Jamison. What makes the book so compelling is Dr. Jamison’s own bipolar illness and past suicidal ideation.
As I said in the interview with The Journal, stress due to layoffs may explain a few of the recent deaths. But such stress is, most likely, only the most recent incident in a long line of stressful incidents for these poor people.
Stress, as I will discuss in future blogs, plays a major role in the creation of depression.
