Veronica Jones: Why Are Lawyers Killing Themselves?

The very mention of the word "lawyer" puts a bad taste in a lot of peoples mouths. It's understandable why lawyers are so disliked, they defend people: innocent or not. And this makes a lot of people angry. Death threats and hatred from the public seems to come with the job. So it doesn't come as a surprise that lawyers rank 4th on the list of professions pursed by people who later commit suicide. However, suicides have been on the uptick lately, especially with prominent lawyers.

From what the article states, lawyers are much more prone to depression. In fact, a study held by the University of Washington shows that 40% of recently graduated law students suffer from depression. One example of a lawyer who just about committed the act was Steve Angel, who wrote about how his struggles.  "Instead of eight hours of sleep a night I was able to get by on six hours and finally four hours. The next things to go were my hobbies... I stopped reading for fun... I stopped taking vacations. Then I stopped socializing because I didn't have time to waste away from work. Then I suffered through a divorce and the loss of my family," Angel said. "For the next 10 years, the chief source of joy in my life was winning a case. Finally, in 2003, I had nothing left to give, hit a wall and crashed and burned." After this he gave up his license and recovered, he returned, not as a lawyer, but as a legal researcher who studies depression and advocated for people to get help.

My biggest question is, why isn't this more talked about? This is a big problem. Suicide is no laughing matter, but few people seem to care if it's committed by a lawyer, because 'well, they must have been awful people anyway'. No. This is something that needs to be paid attention to.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/19/us/lawyer-suicides/index.html?hpt=us_c2