Legal Minute
Are You Okay?
The Most Important Conversation
No One Wants to Have
Robin Frazer Clark
Partner, Robin Frazer Clark, P.C.
[email protected]
W
hen a friend or family member commits suicide,
often the first thing that goes through one’s mind is
the “if onlys.” “If only I had seen the warning signs.”
“If only I had known.” “If only I had gotten him help.” The “if
onlys” are the saddest, loneliest thoughts in the aftermath of
suicide, especially when you consider the fact that suicide is
largely preventable.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among lawyers.
One study in 1991 by John Hopkins University found that
lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than
average, and a 1997 study in Canada found that lawyers
were six times as likely to commit suicide than the average
person. By comparison, suicide is only the 10th leading cause
of death in the general population. When I was President
of the State Bar of Georgia, at least three Georgia lawyers
committed suicide during my first six months. One did so in
the parking garage of the State Bar Headquarters. I decided
that if I ignored this crisis in our profession, I would be shirking
my duties as President, so I took action, first by learning a
lot about suicide. I was surprised to learn that suicide was
largely preventable if the suicidal thought is detected or
discovered in time. I then appointed Randy Evans to chair
the State Bar’s Suicide Prevention Committee, who along
with other Committee members, all of whom had, in some
way, been touched by suicide, could tackle this issue.
I also soon discovered that other state bar associations
were being hit with the same problem of lawyer suicides. A
friend of mine, Yvette Hourigan, the Director of the Kentucky
Bar Association Lawyer Assistance Program (KYLAP),
was already in the thick of the issue of lawyer suicide and
thanks to Yvette, on the forefront of prevention and healing.
Yvette said that in confronting this issue, Kentucky was in an
absolute crisis:
“Over the course of approximately two years, there were
at least 15 lawyer suicides – in Kentucky alone. The
Kentucky Lawyer Assistance Program undertook a massive
educational campaign over the next year on suicide
awareness, recognition and prevention.
8 THE ATLANTA LAWYER
May 2015
We’re happy to report that in the two years following the
(Wolfson) article, we know of only one or two lawyer suicides
here in Kentucky.”
Depression and substance abuse play a large role in leading
one down the path to suicide. The nature of our work presents
a unique level of stress. Many of us handle life and-death
issues while trying to put food on our families’ tables, meet
payroll, pay off student debt and deal with billable hours just
to name a few. The very qualities of a good lawyer that make
him or her great at their job also make him or her vulnerable
to depression, substance abuse and suicide: perfectionism
and pessimism. The unique nature of the practice of law,
in which you usually have an adversary trying his or her
hardest to prevent you from being successful, magnifies the
pressure. As KYLAP Director Yvette Hourigan so astutely
says: “If you’re a doctor everyone is working together to
save the patient. You don’t have someone come into the
operating room to try to kill the patient while you are trying
to save him.”
Studies of suicide have proven that sometimes simply
eliminating the means by which one could take one’s own
life can prevent that person’s suicide. About 90 percent of
the people who try suicide and live ultimately never die by
suicide, which is a startling fact. In a fascinating article in
The Lancet, “Means Restriction for Suicide Prevention,” the
authors write:
The probability of individuals attempting suicide decreases
when they are precluded from implementing a preferred
method, i.e., Suicide attempts are often method-specific.
Moreover, if a highly lethal method is not available and some
individuals do not defer their attempt, they frequently use
less lethal, more common ones (e.g., drug overdose). From
the perspectives of public health and injury prevention, the
choice of a method that is less lethal than others can be
advantageous if the attempt proves to be non-fatal.
The sudden, unplanned nature of many suicides implies that
individuals tend to use the method most readily accessible
The Official News Publication of the Atlanta Bar Association