Recently the #LawNeedsWellnessBecause hashtag was trending on Twitter. Lawyers weighed in on why mental health should be a priority. Amongst the #LawNeedsWellnessBecause tweets, the structure of how lawyers practice was pointed to as a contributor to stress, anxiety, and burnout.
Despite the structural factors influencing mental health, there is almost an exclusive focus on fixing the individual. In the article “How mindfulness privatised a social problem: The £3.4trn industry encourages a preoccupation with the symptoms of mental illness, rather than their social causes,” Hettie O’Brien in the New Statesman discusses this issue.
O’Brien quotes Purser who argues that mindfulness has become the perfect coping mechanism for neoliberal capitalism. “It privatises stress and encourages people to locate the root of mental ailments in their own work ethic. As a psychological strategy it promotes a particular form of revolution, one that takes place within the heads of individuals fixated on self-transformation, rather than as a struggle to overcome collective suffering.” There is a pre-occupation with the symptoms of stress, rather than overcoming the social causes of stress.
I am not suggesting that mindfulness, medication, exercise, eating well and sleeping well are not important. But when it comes to practicing law, we must also look at the structural factors that create burnout.
There are small ways that we can begin to make changes. For example, Borden Ladner Gervais recently started having an onsite counsellor to help their employees and to help change the conversation around mental health.
At the end of the day, #LawNeedsWellnessBecause “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” (Famous quote from Rabbi Hillel)
(Views are my own and do not represent the views of any organization. This post was originally posted on slaw.ca)
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