Today’s Family Lawyer wanted to mark and recognise World Mental Health Day today (10th October) to raise awareness of the importance of good mental health and well-being in the family law sector and legal industry as a whole.
Mental health has been endemic in the legal profession for some time, and the well-being of practitioners is especially important right now, in the world we live in, with not only pressure from professional working lives but also personal too.
It goes without saying that working as a legal professional can be very stressful, with never-ending workloads and emotionally complex challenging cases, and off course, the added stress of a pandemic added to the mix too.
At the beginning of 2019, Legal Mental Health Charity, LawCare, reported receiving their highest ever number of helpline calls from solicitors in 2018. An even more concerning statistic was that calls from solicitors complaining about bullying and harassment had nearly doubled in 2018.
Since then, LawCare have been tackling the issue of mental health across the industry. Last year they launched a new advocacy scheme ‘LawCare Champions’, which aims to appoint legal professionals in the UK to act as mental health and wellbeing advocates within the legal community.
Fourteen champions were appointed in 2019 which was a huge asset helping spread the word about LawCare and the importance of good mental health and wellbeing amongst the legal community. Since then, LawCare’s champions have evolved over the last 12 months and they have reported this week that they now have 37 champions in total.
Since 10th March 2020, LawCare have been monitoring calls and have reported 28 per cent of all support contacts, including calls, webchats and emails, have had a covid element. This represents 154 out of 544 contacts since the pandemic started.
The mains issues that practitioners have been contacting Lawcare about are worsening of existing mental issues, not being permitted to work from home/not wanting to return to work after furlough, overloaded with work due to colleagues being furloughed, Struggling to adapt working from home and emotional distress due to isolation/boredom.
This month, LawCare also launched a ground-breaking research study ‘Life In The Law’ ahead of World Mental Health Day too.
Elizabeth Rimmer, Chief Executive of LawCare said:
“As World Mental Health Day approaches we continue to be concerned about the emotional and financial impact of the pandemic. We would like to remind all legal professionals, including support staff, they can contact us for free, in confidence, to discuss anything that is bothering them. Talking through your problems with one of our trained staff and volunteers, who have all worked in the law themselves, can really help.”
For further information visit LawCare’s website www.lawcare.org.uk and helpline 0800 279 6888 and email support@lawcare.org.uk.
