Lawyers in the United States suffer from elevated anxiety, stress, depression, burnout and problem drinking despite efforts over the past decade to improve attorney wellness and mental health, a new national survey has found.
Nearly 22% of lawyers report moderate to severe symptoms of depression, according to the new study, the American Bar Association’s Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs and lawyer mental health advisory firm Krill Strategies published this week in the Journal of Affective Disorders. Drawn from responses of more than 37,000 lawyers, it’s the largest study to date on lawyer wellness, according to the authors.
Bar associations, law firms and other legal employers have stepped up efforts to address lawyer mental health since an earlier version of the study raised alarms in 2016, said study co-author Patrick Krill, but the new data shows that those initiatives have not done enough.
“It shows that the issues were worse than we thought,” Krill told Reuters. “The levels of distress were higher than we knew.”
More than 20% of the surveyed lawyers reported moderate to severe levels of anxiety, while nearly 19% reported those levels for stress. More than 41% reported that time in the legal profession has been “detrimental” to their mental health.
The study also found high rates of problem drinking among lawyers, with nearly 42% screening positive for hazardous drinking and 26% of those reporting an even higher level of drinking, on an international tool used to assess alcohol use.
Prior research has shown lawyers suffer mental health problems at higher rates than the general U.S. population, though the new study does not draw such comparisons.
While the study methodologies differed slightly, rates of anxiety, stress and depression were each higher than those found in the 2016 report. The rate of hazardous drinking, however, had declined.
Consistent with the earlier study, younger lawyers reported mental health challenges at higher rates than their older counterparts, with the study authors theorizing that the stress of being a novice in a demanding profession, a lack of professional support, and educational debt are contributing factors.
Mental health and wellness also varied by practice area, the study found. Lawyers working in house at companies or in judicial chambers reported lower levels of distress and burnout than did solo practitioners and those in private practice.
Lawyers at law firms reported higher levels of hazardous drinking while attorneys involved in litigation had higher rates of burnout and hazardous drinking — which the study authors said could be the result of the “adversarial exposure” of litigation alongside long hours.
Lawyers working the most hours per week are also the most at risk of burnout, the study found. Those working more than 71 hours a week were approximately three times as likely to screen positive for moderate to severe stress as were those working between 31 and 40 hours a week.
Concerns over confidentiality and potential harm to their professional reputations remain the top barriers cited by lawyer respondents to seeking help for their mental health and wellness challenges, the study found.
Source: Reuters
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