These are the things we worry about: tenure, status, job security, increasing our credentials, competing, sharing, collaborating, hiding the ball. Doing it better. Arguing. Being right. Procrastinating. Maybe litigating it out if things get bad. Helping students; fighting with students. Administration. Interviewing. Conference presentations. Grading. Day-to-day headaches. Good things, bad things, very tired, start over. Pay bills. Move out of state. Do it again if we have to.
And then we get word that a friend’s college sophomore son, the baby who grew up to be a tall, talented, sweet, adorable, smart, musical, cynical, maybe even moody kid- – tried to commit suicide last week. This is our wake-up call. Everything is important. It really is. But life – it is an understatement to say life is most important. Depression is real.What can we do? Be there, be aware, be supportive. Also support and promote legislative efforts designed to create an open dialog and support system and to raise awareness about depression and suicide on college campuses:
http://www.apa.org/about/gr/education/advocacy/2009/campus-improve.aspx
Thanks for hearing me out.
Posted by DBorman on April 11, 2011 at 12:13 AM
Comments
Having practiced for 11 years and struggled with depression myself, I actually took some time in class 2 weeks ago to talk about the extremely high rate of depression and anxiety disorders — and suicide — among lawyers. I followed the brief in class discussion with an email attaching an item I wrote for my state bar about depression (both in general and mine specifically). [it is page 3 of the document at this link ].
My message was not that being a lawyer makes you want to kill yourself (at least not usually), but that depression and anxiety are DISEASES that can be treated. We all need to be conscious of what is going on with our individual lives and psyches so that any issues can be treated before getting to the point of suicide.
Several of my students told me how much they appreciated me raising the issue as they (or friends or family members) had struggled with depression and the stigma that is still attached to the disease.
Posted by: BSC | Apr 12, 2011 9:00:02 PM
I’m very sorry to hear about your friend’s son, and I’m glad he wasn’t successful and so will have the chance to be helped.
Since you did post this on Prawfs, I thought I’d take a moment to mention the very high incidence of depression among practicing lawyers. An unfortunately contingency of the reality that many — if not most — full-time law school faculty have never really engaged that aspect of the profession is that the stark truth — the job this education is preparing you may conflict in very serious, deep ways with life, and if it does, you need to equip yourself to stop that spiral before it kills you — is insufficiently communicated.
It’s all very nice to talk about work-life balance, quite another thing to equip law students with an inner scale.
Posted by: RESternglantz | Apr 12, 2011 7:20:00 PM
I just wanted to say as someone with close family members who suffer from serious mental illness (including depression), thanks for posting this. Too often people don’t want to talk about these issues.
Posted by: Anon | Apr 12, 2011 4:10:24 PM