A. Gail Prudenti, BridgeTower Media Newswires
Nearly a year ago, a national task force of the American Bar Association issued a report concluding: “To be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer. Sadly, our profession is falling short when it comes to well-being.”
Just last month, Joseph Milowic III, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, wrote a revealing and very moving essay for the New York Law Journal about his struggles with depression, and the stigma attached to seeking help.
The ABA report and Mr. Milowic’s column identify an elephant in the profession’s living room: Attorneys are more susceptible to depression, substance abuse and suicide than most other professionals. Studies show that lawyers suffer from depression at a rate about four times that of the general public. The attorney addiction rate is somewhere between 15 percent and 18 percent, compared to roughly 9 percent for the rest of the population. One study indicated that 21 percent of working attorneys qualify as “problem drinkers,” compared to 12 percent among other professionals. Not surprisingly, an estimated 50 – 70 percent of attorney discipline matters involve substance abuse problems. Further, lawyers commit suicide at a rate above all but three other professionals — doctors, pharmacists and dentists.
Of particular concern to me as a law school dean is evidence that those various mental health issues develop in law school.
There are all kinds of theories on why law students and lawyers seem to be particularly at risk for mental illness. The practice of law is a stress-laden vocation. People drawn to the profession tend to be high-achieving perfectionists who put great pressure on themselves to meet their own lofty expectations and those of their professors, partners, clients and families. Some attorneys allow the work-life ratio to slip wildly out of kilter. Practicing law can be a highly competitive and aggressive profession. The stakes are extraordinarily high — millions or even billions of dollars may be riding on attorney’s success or failure, and someone may literally live or die depending on whether an attorney performs better than an adversary. That is lot for anyone to carry on his or her shoulders.
But at the end of the day, the “why” is less important than the “what:” As a profession, what are we going to do about it?
The New York State Bar Association, as well as the Nassau and Suffolk County Bar Associations, has a robust lawyer assistance program where attorneys battling with a substance abuse or mental health issue can seek help. The American Bar Association has urged state bars to add sessions on mental health and substance abuse to the long and growing list of topics offered as part of mandatory continuing legal education programs (a few states, including California, Nevada, North Carolina and South Carolina, require such courses. New York does not).
All of those efforts may help, but only if an afflicted lawyer gets over the huge initial hurdle: the stigma, fear, humiliation and embarrassment that are often the impediment to getting help. Treatment professionals report that law students, attorneys and judges tend to keep their problems hidden longer than other patients. Consequently, there is often more collateral damage — failed relationships, destroyed careers, health issues and the like —which deepen and exacerbate the underlying problem. Some keep their problems to themselves out of embarrassment, denial or even hubris. Many fear that if they reveal their struggle they will be viewed as weak or ineffective —and not as the kind of person who should be advising clients. If there is a common refrain from attorneys and law students who have endured the pain, the loneliness, the desperation and the hopelessness of depression and its results it is: “I so wish I had sought help earlier!”
It’s time to end the stigma.
We need to make it easier for people to seek help and treatment. All of us in the profession, and in every business, need to embrace what we know to be scientifically true: Mental illness is just that, an illness, not a character flaw. Until we as a profession grant our suffering colleagues the support, understanding, respect and compassion they deserve, they are unlikely to seek the help they so desperately need.
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Judge A. Gail Prudenti is the Dean of the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University.
