Blue Summers—Part 1
Summer—a time when we think about vacations, picnics and enjoying the great outdoors. But mental health conditions, like depression, anxiety and burnout, do not take vacations. Being depressed, anxious or burned out is never pleasant, and it can be worse during the summer when others in our space act like we should all be extracting great enjoyment from the season.
So, I want to talk about dealing with mental health challenges during the lazy, crazy days of summer. This is a big topic, so we are splitting it into two installments so that reading it doesn’t take up too much of your precious downtime.
Let’s review a few key concepts for ease of reference.
Mental health is, according to the World Health Organization:
A state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.
This definition has an internal component (“a state of mental well-being”) that impacts coping, learning and working effectively, but also has an external component through your relationships with others. There is a cause and effect implicit in this definition—if you are in a state of well-being, you are able to cope, and you are then able to engage with your community.
As lawyers, we are part of a community of lawyers but also serve a society governed by the rule of law, where access to justice for the less fortunate is an inherent goal. We want to be in a positive state of mental health internally, and we want to be civil to our colleagues and support larger social goals. We have to have the former to be able to do the latter.
This is why Assist receives funding from the Law Society of Alberta, the organization charged with governing the legal profession in the public interest: lawyers must be well so that they can protect client rights, and this applies whether your clients are public companies or vulnerable children. We see this from the inclusion of well-being as an objective in the Law Society’s current strategic plan and in our new Continuing Professional Development program. (Remember: the CPD year closes at the end of September and you will have to assess completion of your 2024 plan while preparing your 2025 plan.)
Mental health exists on a continuum from good mental health as per the WHO definition through to experiencing extreme distress. The WHO adds:
Mental health conditions include mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities as well as other mental states associated with significant distress, impairment in functioning, or risk of self-harm. People with mental health conditions are more likely to experience lower levels of mental well-being, but this is not always or necessarily the case.
Many people who are on the positive side of the mental health continuum (“good” mental health) often attribute their state to excellent genes, adaptive coping strategies and right living. Unfortunately, this suggests the corollary that we are somehow to blame when mental health crosses over to the negative side. But mental health challenges arise in spite of our genes and habits. Blaming people for their mental health struggles creates stigma, and stigma interferes with timely access to services.
We generally don’t own a life estate in a spot along the mental health continuum as our mental health changes just as our physical health changes. Over the course of our lives, we will have viruses and infections, broken bones and physiological challenges as well as minor impediments like a poor sleep that affect our physical health in the short or long-term. And we will have times of positive mental health but also periods of poorer mental health as we experience life challenges which may shake us to our very cores. But landing on the poorer part of the spectrum does not confine us to that polarity for the rest of our lives: we can move back into the positive realms with strategies, support and time.
While those of us prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder will associate our bleak feelings with short days and absence of light, it doesn’t mean that sunshine in the summer somehow burns off depression. Let’s be sensitive to people who are struggling to find satisfaction, let alone joy, in what we consider ideal weather.
Summer is often a happy time at law firms—new students may be starting, full of energy and optimism about their careers and we celebrate bar admissions of last year’s students, while we try to go on holidays to recharge their batteries. This is the theory, but the reality is that work still goes on. I remember a senior lawyer from Toronto sharing his three myths about living in Alberta:
- You don’t feel the cold because it is a dry cold,
- You don’t feel the heat because it is a dry heat, and
- No one does any work during the Stampede.
My early experience was that clients from outside of Alberta would schedule meetings and negotiations so they could come to Calgary for the Stampede. They would leave the meetings and go off to the rodeo or to some wild and crazy event, and we worker bees settled into a long night of drafting. Sigh.
Two psychologists from the Massachusetts Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (an Assist equivalent which employs inhouse clinical counsellors while we contract out our services) tackle issues relating to depression and burnout in their book The Full Weight of the Law: How Legal Professionals Can Recognize and Rebound from Depression.
They emphasize that we have to understand the difference between depression and burnout. According to Dr. Fortgang and Dr. Healy, burnout is largely focused on one’s work life while depression pervades more aspects of our lives. Another significant difference is that lawyers experiencing burnout often feel better with time away from work, from weekends without working to vacations. As Dr. Fortgang and Dr Healy say,
Full-fledged depression, on the other hand doesn’t take vacations—the negative thoughts about life and self tend to persist and to color most or all facets of life.
I hope that everyone in our community is taking a vacation this summer. I remember being a junior lawyer and not getting away for two straight summers, becoming more stressed and fractious before finally getting away in September of the second year. I felt much better after a holiday! In hindsight, I recognize that I may have been feeling burnout knocking at my door, but I evaded harder-to-treat depression that time.
Vacations are good and healthy, and taking vacations should not be viewed as showing a lack of commitment to one’s employer. They are not selfish indulgences but are part of how we ensure that we are the best lawyers we can be, bringing our A game to our clients and files as much as possible.
At Assist, I hear from and about lawyers who cannot take their full vacation allotment each year as they strive to reach high billable hour targets. This was me in the late 1980s—I get it. From my point of view thirty-some years later, I see the issue as capitulation to a system where you will be “entitled” to a phantom vacation allotment that you may never believe you can fully access. We all, as individuals, can choose what we are willing to accept as working conditions, with the possible exception of articling students. We tend to think that everything will get better as we become more senior, and sometimes it does. But I urge lawyers to map out what their values are and what is most important to them. Working in a structure that offers desirable vacation allocations which cannot be reached realistically is a choice, but it is not the only choice. Only you can make the decision about what works best for you.
If you are unable to take time away from work (“REAL vacations” in the parlance of the National Study on the Psychological Health Determinants of Canadian Legal Professionals), you may be at greater risk for burnout and depression. According to Dr. Healy and Dr. Fortgang, symptoms associated with both burnout and depression include:
- fatigue, lack of energy and difficulty initiating tasks,
- cynicism, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, irritability with others
- a sense of numbness,
- physical complaints of aches and insomnia.
If this list of symptoms describes how you are feeling this summer, please try to get away from work for a vacation. Monitor how you are and how you feel when you are less connected to your workplace. If you the symptoms outlined above disappear, then perhaps you are experiencing burnout. Please meet with an Assist psychologist or your family doctor to discuss how you can protect yourself.
But if taking a vacation does not provide relief, your symptoms may relate to depression as opposed to burnout. I remember being on vacation in Kauai, one of my favourite destinations, and continuing to feel disabling waves of depression and anxiety, sitting on the floor of the bathroom in a beautiful condo overlooking the ocean feeling utterly empty and overpoweringly sorrowful, in spite of the location, the view, and the holiday. I was already on medical leave from my corporate counsel role, and when I described how I had felt during my vacation to my family doctor, she recognized that my medications were not working and needed to be changed.
I am sharing this story because if this happens to you—you don’t experience any abatement in your symptoms amid something you would normally enjoy and find replenishing like a summer vacation - please ask for help. An Assist counsellor or your family doctor may recognize that you are experiencing depression, and treatments are available.
And if you are battling a serious bout of depression, you may need to take a leave of absence from work. I am a great believer in the importance of having disability coverage.You may also be able to access EI disability benefits but unfortunately these benefits are capped at a level which may be too low for most lawyers). Please don’t let not being able to afford to take time off work impede your recovery.
I will talk about the challenges lawyers can face when they realize that they need medical leaves of absence (often because their family doctor or counsellor tells them so!) next week.
So, I’m going to pause here for this week—please ensure that you are getting a break this summer. If you have planned a major holiday for a later time, you may not be taking time off this summer, but do make sure that you are finding rest and relaxation where you can, perhaps through an off-line weekend or evenings filled with activities and people that nourish your soul.
If you want ideas about how to take breaks or recharge, please check out Strategies for Turning Off at the End of the Work Day or Unplugging to Recharge.
Have a great week and we will finish this conversation next week.
Loraine