By President Andrew Lu AM, Mental Health Tribunal
We were all taught how to identify legal issues in law school. Some of us were even shown the basics of legal ethics and legal drafting. But most of us learned almost nothing about exercising self-care or supporting others to manage the impact of stress, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. Thinking deeply about and finding solutions to legal problems can involve all three. The practice of law exposes us to information and situations that can cause emotional dysregulation and, ultimately, physical and mental harm.
Many lawyers have experienced mental health challenges, but it remains difficult to speak about these issues. Like most lawyers who have been in practice more than 20 years, I have known peers in the amalgam and on the bench who have died by suicide, including my own former boss at a top-tier firm. Perhaps earlier intervention from a mental health professional may have helped them to step back and to re-set. Perhaps not. Most of us have gained perspectives from our lived and living experiences, but learning about mental wellbeing by discovery is not good enough.
If we remain without the tools to recognise and mitigate risks to our physical and psychological safety, we may burn out or give up. The attrition rate from the legal profession is high, and mental distress can impact anyone regardless of background, postcode, title, or salary. A bit of pressure, or a hard deadline, can be motivating. But too much too often and without respite is hazardous. When under stress, the human brain has evolved to switch to survival mode. When we are in a state of fight or flight, our reasoning is impaired. Self-harm, walking away from a workplace, or exiting the profession may feel like the only choices, despite many other options.
Our business as usual is to examine and address the worst of human behaviour, when time is of the essence, in an environment of performance-oriented love. Our opinion might only ever be sought when something awful occurs. We have high expectations of ourselves and don’t want to under-deliver, especially if we are also perfectionists or people-pleasers. The law is hierarchical and gossipy. It is as much a profession of comparison and jealousy as it is a place of collegiality and collaboration. Competitive tension is always in the air. Much of what we deal with is confidential and sensitive. Anyone working in small teams or solo without the chance to debrief may internalise and ruminate. And at the end of the day, we come home too late to have dinner with the family, and the only one left to greet us is the dog who still needs a walk at 11pm.
Lawyers can be lonely, isolated, or constrained by a sense of shame or embarrassment that prevents us from seeking help. Stoicism may make our careers less sustainable. The Law Society of Western Australia provides its members with free and confidential psychological support through Law Care. Workplaces may also offer some form of wellness or employee assistance programme in line with an employer’s positive duty to take reasonable steps to safeguard the physical and psychosocial safety of workers. But many who should be accessing help are not doing so, choosing instead to suffer in silence. That is when mental wellbeing can deteriorate.
Of the more than 63,000 people each year in WA who access mental health services, it’s those with the most serious conditions who require treatment and care on an involuntary basis under the Mental Health Act. They are among our society’s most vulnerable, whose lives are a coalescence of multiple forms of disadvantage or setbacks. These are the people who appear before the Mental Health Tribunal. They need assertive treatment and follow-up to support their recovery, to achieve stability, and to live with dignity. Before their mental health crisis, many led purposeful lives including as parents, caregivers, business owners, in our armed forces, in the creative industries, and even as lawyers.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare highlights that mental health challenges and substance misuse account for 15 per cent of our total population burden of disease, second only to cancer. Adding the 3 per cent burden of disease attributable to suicide and self-inflicted injuries, mental health is Australia’s number one disease burden. And the flow-on effects are also significant. In a recent study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, men with moderate or severe depression were 62 per cent more likely to engage in some form of intimate partner violence.
Men are half as likely as women to seek help from their primary care physician when struggling with mental health. Annually 3,200 people died by suicide across Australia, and 75 per cent of those are men. Suicide is the main cause of death for men aged 45 and under. The national suicide prevention strategy 2025-2035 acknowledges that prevention and postvention strategies could be more effective if they included dedicated tailored training and peer facilitators to better support men and other populations disproportionately impacted by suicide.
Reforming the way we manage mental ill-health, to reduce the national disease burden and the number of preventable deaths, is a public health issue. In professions like law, the nature of the work, long hours, and a lack of control, introduces an extra layer of risk because our workplaces seldom adopt trauma-informed practice and are not always safe, which is ironic because so much legal work involves clients who have experienced complex trauma. The significant investment in training and supporting lawyers must include the professional skills to say no when overloaded, how to meaningfully support peers in distress who need someone to talk to, how and to whom concerns might be raised about the workplace or the conduct of people in it, and what techniques to engage to manage stress, pressure and the expectations of others. These are professional skills that can be taught and should be a regular part of continuing legal education.
Just addressing the stigma of poor mental health is not enough. We need to move beyond awareness and towards action if we are to reduce the unconscionably high population burden of disease from mental health and substance misuse, whether we are the ones struggling or when we see a colleague suffering. It is difficult to take meaningful action without the required skills.
