71 The Alabama Lawyer 152 (2010). The Professional Cost of Untreated Addiction and Mental Illness in Practicing Lawyers.

AuthorBy MaryT. Robinson

Alabama Lawyer

2010.

71 The Alabama Lawyer 152 (2010).

The Professional Cost of Untreated Addiction and Mental Illness in Practicing Lawyers

The Professional Cost of Untreated Addiction and Mental Illness in Practicing LawyersBy MaryT. RobinsonAs Americans and as lawyers, we tend to believe that the personal problems or illnesses of colleagues are just that-personal. We believe in the individual's right to privacy, and we construct laws and practices that protect privacy. We consider it a matter of respect not to inquire about a colleague's personal life unless the colleague invites the inquiry.

That perspective plays an ironic role in allowing mental afflictions, and, in particular, addictive illness to take hold and progress, with dramatically destructive results to the afflicted lawyers and those with whom they interact, including colleagues and clients. Intrinsic to addictive illness is the ability to deny reality as others see it, and those afflicted tend to be surrounded by family, friends and colleagues who protect them from reality, both by taking actions that save them from the consequences of their behavior and by assiduously avoiding naming what seems wrong. Treatment professionals use this analogy: there is an elephant in the living room and everyone pretends it is not there, even as they go through increasingly contorted maneuvers to step around it and clean up its messes.

The reality is that lawyers are almost three times more likely than the general population to suffer from depression and twice as likely to suffer from alcoholism.(fn1) Lawyers are addicted to illegal drugs, lawyers are gambling and sex addicts and lawyers suffer from serious mental illness, such as bipolar disorder. When these illnesses are not treated, they almost always adversely affect the lawyer's capacity to practice law.

Disciplinary Impact

At least 25 percent of the lawyers who face formal disciplinary charges are identified as suffering from addiction or other mental illness.(fn2) Many others belong in that category, but are not counted, ironically, because they are exhibiting symptoms of disease. A surprising number of lawyers default and lose their licenses without ever answering or appearing. Some of those might be making a rational decision to abandon the practice of law and move onto something else, but many more defaulters are immobilized by depression or reduced to shadows of their former selves by addiction. Plus there are many who appear and defend, but they do so in the fog of denial, a unique mix of honest confusion about why life feels out of control and active refusal to acknowledge reality. In some, denial tends to be defiant and off-putting, an aggressive shield against allowing other people to see the symptoms of addiction. For others, the sincerity of the confusion is contagious, and observers are not inclined to question what is going on beneath the surface.

Statistics about addiction and mental illness in discipline cases need to be understood as rather fluid. They can include what has been professionally diagnosed, what the respondent reports, and what observers see as obvious indicators. Even where there has been a professional diagnosis, people can suffer from overlapping addictions and other illness, and when that is the case, it may be years into treatment before each contributing cause is identified. With that caveat, the illnesses most often identified in the course of disciplinary proceedings are...

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