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Panel identifying steps to improve lawyer well-being

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Panel identifying steps to improve lawyer well-being

‘We have a unique opportunity to do something big here’

Mark D. Killian

Editor

At a recent voluntary bar association meeting, Dori Foster-Morales asked how many people had battled cancer or broken a bone.

Many hands shot up.

Then, she asked those gathered: Who has sought counseling to deal with mental health or well-being issues?

Dori Foster-Morales Crickets. The room fell silent, people looked down, and no one raised their hands.

“If the most prominent of us are afraid to come out, imagine the folks who are struggling,” said Foster-Morales, chair of the Bar’s new Special Committee on Mental Health and Wellness for Florida Lawyers.

Yet, in private conversations, Foster-Morales said, she knows close to a dozen well-known, respected lawyers who have sought help, and they told her it was the best thing they ever did to change their lives for the better.

Removing the stigma associated with mental health issues, so Florida lawyers feel comfortable addressing their personal or professional struggles, is one of the major goals of the committee.

Toward that end, the panel plans to host a number of town hall meetings to engage the membership in an open dialog; conduct programs to educate employers on how to address mental health and wellness issues with their employees, and otherwise assist Florida lawyers in taking practical steps toward wellness.

Improving the mental health and well-being of Florida’s lawyers is in everyone’s best interest, Foster-Morales told the committee, when it met in Tampa at the Bar’s Fall Meeting.

“There are transition periods in our lives, and how we deal with those is really what helps us and our families,” she said. “People need to understand that healthier lawyers and healthier judges are more effective.”

Michael Higer Bar President Michael Higer said he created the special committee because the issue of mental health is “deeply personal” to him, as it has “touched my family and touched me professionally.”

“The goal for me, ultimately, is that at the end of this year we want to hear from our lawyers, we want to get their buy-in and hear their pathos, give them a chance to emote, and feel that they are being heard,” said Higer.

the time he leaves office in June, Higer said, he hopes to have in place a coordinated program of health and wellness opportunities for the membership.

Those opportunities, Foster-Morales said, will include a comprehensive hotline for mental health and wellness and an enhanced webpage outlining in one place all the Bar’s programs.

The committee will also put together mental health and wellness toolboxes to bring cultural changes to firms and to aspects of the law that are detrimental to lawyers.

Plans are also underway to provide member benefits that include access to mental-health professionals, career coaches, healthy food delivery services, gym memberships, and other items — like standing desks — to improve the physical health of lawyers.

The January issue of The Florida Bar Journal will also focus on mental health and wellness, chronicling how mental health issues impact the profession, resources where lawyers can seek assistance, and testimonials from lawyers who have overcome their mental health and addiction issues.

Higer said mental health and wellness will also be the theme of The Florida Bar’s Annual Convention in Boca Raton in June, complete with a wellness area that will focus on education and provide opportunities and activities to promote well-being, including tests to determine how healthy you are, both mentally and physically.

Michelle Suskauer Bar President-elect Michelle Suskauer said the focus on lawyers’ mental health and wellness will not be a one-year project, as she plans to continue the effort with the goal of making it a permanent program of the Bar.

While crisscrossing the state campaigning for Bar president a year ago, Suskauer said stress and mental health concerns were on the minds of most lawyers she interacted with, whether they were from small firms or large.

“In my opinion [mental health and wellness awareness should be] a permanent piece of who we are as a Bar — as an organization — moving forward; because it’s our obligation to take care of our membership, and this is a way we can offer these types of tools to help our members,” Suskauer said.

She realizes it will be a heavy lift to get lawyers to feel comfortable discussing mental health issues and not all of them will, “but we are going to get people more comfortable about talking about it and understanding that there is an acceptance of it, because we are all in the same boat.”

Higer said the Bar’s mental health and wellness effort “has touched a nerve” and has begun a conversation that could lead to a cultural shift in the profession.

“We have a unique opportunity to do something big here,” Higer said. “We are not going to solve this problem. All we can do, I think, is soften some of the edges and make access a little bit easier for folks.”

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