Brought to you by the Depression Is Real Coalition, The Down & Up Show is dedicated to the reality of depression. Each week our hosts will talk with some of the world's top experts on depression, as well as people who have been impacted by this illness. The reality of depression is that it is a debilitating and potentially deadly medical condition that affects more than 15 million Americans every year. The other reality of depression is that there is hope.

Down & Up Show #53: Lawyers with Depression

DR. REEF KARIM
Welcome to the Down and Up Show on Depression is Real.org. I'm your host, Dr. Reed Karim, psychiatrist, addiction specialist and relationship therapist. Today we'll be speaking with Daniel Lukasik, an attorney from Buffalo, New York.

Mr. Lukasik lives with depression himself and has worked with colleagues in the legal community who are also living with this disease. Mr. Lukasik founded the Committee to Assist Lawyers with Depression and launched a website, Lawyers with Depression.com.

His mission is to dispel the stigma that surrounds mental illness in the legal community and help other attorneys understand that, you know what, they're not alone with the disease. Mr. Lukasik, it's a pleasure to speak with you today.

DAN LUKASIK
Oh, thanks for having me on the show.

DR. REEF KARIM
All right, so your organization sounds very interesting. Tell us about your organization, the Committee to Assist Lawyers with Depression. What prompted you to found it?

DAN LUKASIK
Well, I had developed major depression about five years ago. I have been a lawyer for 20 years and I wanted to find a way to help my fellow lawyers who struggled with this illness as I had. When I looked into the research that were available to lawyers with depression at my local Bar Association, you know, I just found that there weren't any.

There were plenty of resources for people with alcohol or drug addictions. So I approached the Bar and I told them about the extent of the problem and that we needed a stand alone committee to address it. We now have a committee and it coordinates all the activities of the support group which I run.

And we just put on a seminar on depression in the legal world and we had over 100 people attend.

DR. REEF KARIM
So there are a lot of people interested because I mean, it-depression affects everybody...

DAN LUKASIK
It affects everybody.

DR. REEF KARIM
...whether you're an attorney or you're a doctor or you're homeless. What... Do you think there's anything specific about a lawyer or the legal community in regards to depression?

DAN LUKASIK
Yeah, I really do. I really do. Two things I'd like to point out that I think distinguish lawyers and depression from the general population. The first was some interesting studies done by Professor Susan Daicoff. She's down at Florida State University.

She wrote a book called "Lawyer Know Thyself" and she found that there were certain personality traits of people that went into law school and the lawyering professional, traits like perfectionism, people who tend to be strong individualists, somewhat neurotic, high achieving people.

And these traits, as you know, Reef, lend themselves well to depression. And the second aspect of it I think that's important to talk about is Dr. Martin Seligman's work on happiness and positive psychology. And he found and determined that lawyers develop a pessimistic thinking style.

And by pessimistic I think what we're talking about is attributing the causes of negative events as stable and global. For example, you know, a bit-this bad situation's going to last forever. And the lawyers tend to see these problems as permanent and uncontrollable as opposed to somebody who's an optimist which sees problems as, you know, local and changeable.

And optimist might look at a problem-a legal problem and say, "Well, I didn't get that one today. I'll get the next one tomorrow". Lawyers tend not to think like that. And I think also I'd point out a third problem that I think is unique to lawyers, is people often say to me, "Well, you know, doctors have a lot of stress too and why aren't their levels of depression so elevated"?

And I think there's something unique about lawyering in the sense that it's a profession built on confrontation. We're always in conflicted with opposing counsel and it's like... I like to compare it to a heart surgeon. A heart surgeon has a very difficult and stressful job but he's in a healing profession.

He doesn't have somebody on the other side trying to do-undo all of his heart surgery that he just performed as you do-you have that problem by contrast in the legal profession. You have somebody on the other side typically trying to undo everything you're doing.

DR. REEF KARIM
Yeah. We read a statistic in a recent Wall Street Journal article stating that 19 percent of lawyers, one in five, suffer from depression at any give time. That's pretty significant numbers. Can you tell us what you know about the prevalence of depression amongst attorneys?

DAN LUKASIK
Sure. Sure. Actually, the seminal study was done by Johns Hopkins University. It's a fascinating study because they looked at 104 occupations to determine which ones had the highest incidence of depression and, remarkably, lawyers topped the list. Came in at number one.

And we're found to suffer from depression at a rate of 3.6 times the other occupations studied, which is just a whopping statistic. And in another study, researchers looking at lawyers, found that nearly 24 percent of them were struggling with depression and 15 percent of them had experienced suicidal ideation in the past month.

DR. REEF KARIM
What percentage was that?

DAN LUKASIK
Fifteen percent...

DR. REEF KARIM
Wow!

DAN LUKASIK
...as attributable to depression. And, you know, these are studies that have been done on lawyers, and then I have my own anecdotal evidence. I created a website, as you mentioned, LawyersWithDepression.com, about eight or nine months ago and, you know, it's been an amazing experience because I've gotten e-mails and phone calls from around the country from lawyers who struggle with depression and their family members.

And they were contacting me to tell me their stories and express their gratitude for the site. And the site has gotten over 50,000 visitors since it started nine months ago, and I get e-mails virtually everyday. So I think when you combine the studies and my own anecdotal experience, I think it's a very widespread problem in the legal profession.

DR. REEF KARIM
How has-how has depression in your life, in your experience, with it- affected your career and affected just your overall life?

DAN LUKASIK
Well, my experience is pretty rough. You know, I, as I've said, have been a lawyer 20 years. I've been managing partner of my firm for the last five years. I had a lot of responsibility and did trial work and litigation. When I started experiencing it about five years, it was like cement running through my veins.

I mean, everything was an effort. I began to want to sleep more. I lost my edge at work, my ability to concentrate. Everything felt really meaningless. I just really wanted to be alone. It's almost as if I describe it to people as the volume was too high in the room.

It was just too high for me and I needed to shy away from it and be alone, which makes it tough because law is a people business and it just became more difficult for me to do my job. I started delegating more and more work and I tried to save what little energy I had for the bigger tasks that were-that I was facing.

But even, you know, this became harder to do. So I approached my fellow partners about changing my role at the firm and, in fact, that's what I've done. So that was my-that was my own experience. And as I tell people, it's not like a good novel where there's a beginning, a middle and a happy ending.

It's a-it's a constantly evolving thing and it-depression is something I live with everyday.

DR. REEF KARIM
What about the legal community? How is depression perceived or how is mental illness perceived in the legal community?

DAN LUKASIK
I think that's a great question, Reef, because I think it's changing. I think historically it's been perceived as something shameful, you know, a real weakness to be hid. Attorneys are afraid to talk about the mental health because the expectation is that, you know, we're all powerful, you know, we don't have any vulnerabilities.

We only have answers for our clients. I think there's a profound fear on the part of partners of losing business were clients to find out. And associates worry about job security and their ability to make partner. So I think there's a general perception. I think it's changing but then-that it's still something to be hidden. And that's one of the reasons why I came out with my website.

DR. REEF KARIM
It didn't take long for your efforts to be recognized by the media. There was the Wall Street Journal, The American Association for Justice and the New York Bar Association. Did this encourage you? Were you encouraged by the media coverage you got for your efforts?

DAN LUKASIK
You know, to be honest with you, I think my first reaction was surprise. You know, when I started these efforts, I had no idea that there'd be such an overwhelmingly positive response. I really thought that, you know, when I started the support group maybe three or four lawyers would show up and we'd sit around and drink coffee. I just did not expect the extent of the media coverage.

But when it started to happen, it really encouraged me to do more. And at the beginning of my efforts there were lots of days where I wondered, you know, whether what I was doing was a good idea.

A good friend of mine, a federal judge, early on in my efforts warned me not to do this kind of work, not to go public with my own depression. He feared that, you know, others in the legal community would hurt me speaking poorly about me. And he really encouraged me to do everything anonymously, you know, and I said I just couldn't do that because that seemed to me to contribute to the stigma of depression. And I really felt from the bottom of my heart, you know, that I had nothing to be ashamed about and I wasn't going to hide.

DR. REEF KARIM
Well, what can law firms do to address depression amongst their attorneys and staff?

DAN LUKASIK
Well, I think that's a-it's a-it's a-it's a big question, it's a question I get asked by a lot of people. I've given a number of seminars around the state and I think that they learn, you know, depression's not going to go away.

If anything the statistics suggest globally, nationally, amongst the general population of lawyers, it's a growing problem and, you know, we're likely to see, you know, one out of every four lawyers has some kind of problem with depression. I think they need to tackle it by the horns and start thinking about how they can constructively deal with the problem.

I'm currently writing a book about depression in the legal profession, which the American Bar Association is going publish, and I'm actually going to have a chapter in there about what law firms can do. But I think what's most important for a firm to recognize is that depression is a highly treatable disease.

You know, the success rates of people who actually get treatment and getting the treatment is the first big hurdle. People who get it tend to do very well on medication and with therapy. And I think it's also important for them to recognize that there are many, many talented and productive lawyers working out there with depression even though the firm may not know it.

And if it comes to the point where the firm does become aware of it and it does become an issue that needs to be addressed, they really need to be supportive for that suffering person because that's what it is, that person is suffering with an illness.

DR. REEF KARIM
What advice do you have for lawyers living with depression?

DAN LUKASIK
You know-you know, I want to-I want them to realize just how serious depression is and the fact that they're in danger. You know, depression left untreated will wreck your house, your life, and lawyers that try to deal with it by themselves will soon learn or hopefully learn that they can't do it on their own. You can't handle depression on your own. And if you try in a sense, you know, you're really fooling yourself because it's just not going to work.

The disease is just too large to be handled alone and you don't need to be ashamed of this. You need to get help and you need to get it now if you want to feel better.

DR. REEF KARIM
That was great. Anything else you'd like to add or any closing statements?

DAN LUKASIK
Well, I would like to say this. I mean, many of the seminars I've given and talks I've given I get approached by people who aren't necessarily depressed themselves but are the spouses or sons and even grandchildren of a lawyer who suffers from depression. And they all ask me, "Dan, you know, what can I do".

"What can I do?" And I think that's a good intention. They all want to help. But I think... Well, one of the first things I say to them is become educated. And there are plenty of great books out there, some of them I've recommended on my website such as "What to Do When Someone You Love is Depressed". That's a wonderful book for people who want to try to help people with depression.

But, more importantly, in-I think in our society we're sometimes a little too concerned or obsessed about what to do. What do I do? Sometimes, and I really, having experienced depression for so many years, it's not always what you can do because sometimes there's nothing you can do.

You know? I think it-I tell people to think about who you can be. Who can you be for that depressed person? And I think, you know-I often use an example. Not to be overly religious but Mother Theresa, she talked about being a loving presence to other people. You know, it's in the-it's in the presence-the loving presence of people that I think we have a chance to really get healed.

DR. REEF KARIM
Well, thanking for speaking to us-with us today, Dan.

DAN LUKASIK
Oh, it's been my pleasure, Reef.

DR. REEF KARIM
The legal professional is not the only industry that has high depression rates. There's also a high prevalence of depression amongst doctors-my profession.

DAN LUKASIK
Yeah.

DR. REEF KARIM
And I've seen the devastating impact it can have on career and relationship. It's important to know that you're not alone. There's no shame no matter what you do for a living. You just need to go and seek help. Join us next week for another segment of the Down and Up Show on DepressionisReal.org. I'm Dr. Reef Karim.