 So I don't think I know everyone. I'm Lorraine Lally. I'm dean of students at the law school. I want to welcome everyone to our National Law School Mental Health Day event So I bring remark greetings on behalf of the law school, but also especially from our wellness committee That was newly formed this semester to help bring wellness health and wellness initiatives To the law school and the members are myself Brianna Klein Amanda Weber Justin Kishbaugh Alicia Pina and who am I missing and Jolie vacay and admissions who I think can attend today And so it's been really great to have a group of people focused on the health and well-being of law students Law school is super stressful, and we want to try to support you Support you as you go through this Really thrilled that people are here. I see members of our counseling center staff members of our professional staff Students and anytime you have an event you're always worried will people come and I just really appreciate everyone taking a time out of your busy Schedule especially with the holiday weekend coming up to think about wellness and to think about stress anxiety and depression And how it impacts us all so I'm going to turn the mic over to the the board members of fire for Delta who Really get all of the credit for helping bring this event together Kailin Pelletier, which you go former former justice of pad Came to me last semester With this idea for this program, and I'm so pleased that through your support we are able to have it happen So I'll bring Amanda and Brianna up from pad Hi, everyone. Thank you Dean Lally for those remarks. I just wanted to introduce myself quickly My name is Brianna Klein. I'm a 2L, and I'm the justice for file for Delta We're really happy to have Mr. Lucasic here this afternoon And I just wanted to give a quick. Thank you to Dean Lally the rest of the wellness committee Amanda and the rest of our e-board without all of you guys this wouldn't be possible So thank you guys for all of your support and all of your help and so I'm going to turn it over to Amanda Hi everyone, my name is Amanda Weber. I'm also 2L and I am the vice justice for file for Delta I am beyond thrilled humbled honored anything under the moon to introduce Mr. Dan Lucasic He was my first boss. So it's a little bit of a full circle here So Dan Lucasic graduated from the University of Buffalo School of Law in 1988 He's been a trial lawyer for over 30 years and is listed in the publication Best Lawyers in America 10 years ago after being diagnosed with major depression Dan created a weekly support group in his community of four attorneys who struggle with illness and a website lawyerswithdepression.com Which is very active and if you have the chance look at it. It's updated constantly as well as the Facebook I get a lot of my material from there. So he takes all the credit for that And it's the first website and blog of its kind in the nation to help law students lawyers and judges Cope and recover from depression His work on mental health has been featured in the New York Times the Wall Street Journal the Washington Post and then CNN as well as many other National and international publications and media outlets He's lectured across the country on the topics of stress anxiety and depression at law schools bar associations and judicial groups Dan is the executive producer for an original documentary a terrible my link Holly depression in the legal profession which is where we kind of stole our title from and Is the recipient of the public service merit award from the New York State Bar Association and the distinguished alumni award for Public service from his law school in Alma Mater For his work in this area. So without anything further I give you Mr. Dan Lucasic Thanks Dean and thanks Amanda for that kind introduction Greetings from Buffalo where I just flew in from this morning I feel as if some good things are happening with the issue of mental health In law schools and the legal profession Because I've become kind of a road act, you know, I've got been going from city to city to city next week I'm in Columbus Ohio speaking at Capitol in the following week at Yale Law School Speaking to their law students and I really feel passionate about this topic because we really have so much in common You know, I was a law student like you are now and in the not too distant future you'll become a lawyer like I am now and I'm here to talk about stress anxiety and depression in law schools and the legal profession And I want to start By telling you a brief story, which is I call it my opening statement I am currently 57 I'm a trial lawyer and have been for almost 30 years. I began My training as a lawyer trying cases in New York City in federal district courts there and state courts and At the time I was When I'll soon to tell you the problem started to happen. I was the managing partner at our litigation firm So I had a lot of responsibility Both as running a business and trying cases Somewhere when I turned about 40 things started to go off the rails for me I Really didn't understand what was happening to me. I started feeling profoundly sad Much of the time I Started my sleep became kind of fragmented. I'd wake up and I Never felt rested My concentration Started to fade and all one this was happening. I remember feeling terrified Because I didn't understand, you know, and you know, I'm an educated person like you were as well And I thought I knew about depression, but I didn't know anybody with depression and I didn't think I had depression so something dramatic start happening to me and It wasn't getting better was getting worse and this certainly showed at the law firm where my productivity went down I started adjourning things. I had my door closed the majority of the time When people would walk in I put as many files and books around my desk as I could to look busy But ultimately I kept praying things would get better, but that didn't happen and At some point. What was the tipping point? I Live maybe about a half hour from my office to my house and when this was going on It was in the dead of winter. So it was very dark. So I drive home in the dark by myself and I recall Seeking out abandoned parking lots looking for a target or Place like that and going into the back of the building where there was nobody and it was dark And I would just start crying crying crying crying For no reason that I could articulate. There wasn't a specific reason why I was crying But it could go on for 15 20 30 minutes and I'd get in you know start the car back up and go back home Nobody knew about this and I think what was distinctive about this Was Normally when we cry, right? It's an emotion expressing grief or loss. We can feel better, right when we cry This didn't happen to me, you know crying beget more crying beget more crying. There was no catharsis involved with the crying So at some point I Went to my family doctor explained my symptoms and he referred me to a psychiatrist and that was really the loneliest experience of my life because I made a Point of picking a psychiatrist deep in the suburbs in an office park where no one would know I was even I mean this sounds Silly now, maybe or that might sound silly to you But at the time I was worried that someone might see me a colleague a judge an opponent lawyer So I was really scared to go my wife didn't know my best friends didn't know So I go to the psychiatrist and I go into the waiting room and it's a large waiting room Maybe had like 30 chairs in it and there's no one else in there So this seemed to like underscore how painfully lonely this experience was for me And I waited and I waited must have waited an hour, you know for the psychiatrist to call me. He finally did He said I had major depression and he put me on some medications the difficult part of his Treatment was I had to take three months off of work So I'd have to tell my fellow partners that I needed to do this And I wasn't going to tell them that because I had broken my leg or you know I had some other kind of disease or illness, but because I had depression so I called the meeting with them and and there are three of them and They're all litigators professionals like me and in a kind of a quaking voice I told them what had happened to me and that I'd need to take this time off and It's really interesting their responses And I think they're typical of the kind of responses that many people get in our society at large But in particular in the legal profession where mental health issues are there's a lot of stigma attached to them But the first partner said to me and shook his head and said, you know, Dan Why don't you go on a vacation? You know, you know, what is the problem here? You know, you got so much to be grateful for you. You have a beautiful wife You're an accomplished lawyer You know, you make a good salary. What is the problem? That was his answer The second partner was silent He was looking out the window we're in a huge high-rise He didn't say anything, you know, and in many ways that was the most painful response Because I imagined the worst, you know, there was no offer of support or anything like that The third partner was kind of like a network news anchor real handsome guy, you know, perfect hair Megawatts smile and always always in a happy mood. Don't matter what what was going wrong with the firm or what was going right So he was listening and nodding his head as I was talking and he was smiling like like this You know, it was so Disconnected to the message. I was telling him But he said his response was Dan you know you You at 90% is better than any lawyer. I know so But the truth of the matter was and I told him I wasn't at 90% I was more at 10% 10% of the person I used to be and I think that Looking back on it what I think is important to recognize was that the first lawyer The take a vacation or get over it kind of response is so typical, right? You know for people who don't know about depression or who've never experienced depression The quiet or cold shoulder treatment is also very common. Sometimes people don't know what to say or Sometimes in their own mind The thoughts are percolating that, you know, this guy can't cut it, you know, what's his problem? This is a tough profession. We're all stressed, you know, so that's how they they calculated in their own minds and the third partner, I Think the way he approached the problem was to diminish it, you know Maybe this will you know, this is not as bad as you're making it out to be so, you know You're not as productive as you were before no big deal Hoping it would go away But it didn't go away So I took those three months off, you know, it was a summertime and I remember going I have this Starbucks that I always go into and there's a lot of judges and lawyers that circulate there in the morning and For whatever reason, you know, I can't fully explain it. I didn't want anybody to know that I was taking time off So I would go to that Starbucks continue to go there during that break in My suit with my briefcase as if nothing had happened as if no one I didn't want to take any chance that anyone would ever know Where's Dan? Where is he? You know, why is he in court? so I would Shower shade get in my suit my briefcase get my coffee and then after all the lawyers or judges Left for the work day go back home and go to bed So that was my experience for about three months At some point it came time to go back to work Which I dreaded because I wasn't well. It wasn't fixed or healthy and what was most striking to me And I'll talk about stigma a lot today What was most striking to me was that and I worked at a large firm No one said welcome back or you know, are you feeling better or cheese or anything? I can do is like silence silence as if I I'd seen these people yesterday but I hadn't seen them in three months and I think it was this sense of Tension like do not disturb the apple cart. Do not talk about this issue, you know Looking back on it, you know at the time I was really hurt by that experience and That's why I think I can speak speak so strongly about stigma because I experienced that deep in my bones and I think When I look back on it clearly everyone doesn't have a hard hard or they're not, you know Dismissive dismisses above me. They weren't dismissive of me But they just didn't have any reference point for what depression is and I think most people in our culture and maybe in the legal profession think of it as Sadness right I did You know, what's the difference? I'm often asked this what's the difference and I think there's a profound difference and one of the things that best explanation I ever read was by this guy who's a psychologist in New York City Depression sadness and grief However, however, the opposite of depression is not happiness But vitality The ability to experience the full range of emotions including happiness excitement sadness and grief It's not sadness or grief. It's an illness and I think that encapsulates Much of my experience and it took me a long long long time to understand that depression or clinical anxiety are illnesses Right they go from the mild end to the more severe end, but at some level there's Neurochemical changes happening in the brain. There's hormonal Changes happening in the brain that make it an illness so I Think we all know, you know that depression is a big problem in our culture Maybe we don't know how big of a problem it is in our culture in our society but depression is the leading cause of Disability in in this country and in the world right now When you think about it or I tried to think about it visually for you guys 20 million people 20 million people at any Point during a year. I diagnosed or live with depression. So to do the math That is 250 football stadiums That's how many people right now as we're talking our strokes a suffering from depression not sadness, but true clinical depression Now let's bring it home to what does that mean to you to you guys? I mean It's going to mean a lot as you'll soon see because the depression rates for Law students and lawyers according to these large studies that just were conducted Are much higher much higher than the general public the general population This study was conducted last year And they surveyed I think it was 15 lost schools and Thousands and thousands of law students from around the country. So these are your Your future colleagues. These are your your classmates, right? And they found that 37% had anxiety 17% had depression and 21% had suicidal thoughts These numbers are two to three times higher than that experienced for regular folks around the country So something seriously going wrong, right with mental health in law schools Why? Why is law school so difficult? Well, they've identified a bunch of reasons you probably have some of your own but here were some of the most Sighted reasons pressure to get good grades the Socratic method pressure to get good summer jobs Excessive workload lack of human connections if you're about a job after law school and poor self-care you know so These things I think in what we're they're trying to do here at this law school in law schools across the country are Trying to reverse this trend By making mental health and mental well-being a higher value and how they teach you They also did a study last year on Lawyers and this was this covered. It was another big survey and they surveyed over 12,000 lawyers from around the country and what they found was Depression rates of 28% that's four times the national average Suicidal ideation 11.5% that's five times the national average okay, if You try to get a sense of the proportion of that There's 1.2 million lawyers practicing in America today, so if you plug that depression rate in That means that 365,000 lawyers across America or roughly the size of the population of Pittsburgh are suffering from depression right now The same study found Also problems with anxiety and stress Okay, about double the national average And I think this is significant because for lots of reasons, but one of the reasons it's significant is that Most people with a mood disorder such as depression Also have an anxiety disorder. It's called comorbidity and they believe it's because The part of our brain that regulates our moods the limbic system is involved deeply involved with Anxiety and depression and actually stress management So many people with depression and anxiety are not good at stress management When I when I was talking about that with a fellow lawyer I said I wasn't very good and it certainly it had a role in my developing depression How ironic is that I'm a trial lawyer and I'm very busy and very stressed But that's the problem, you know people who are Successful don't necessarily aren't necessarily good at managing stress. I mean the best example is that at law schools You're all very accomplished. Otherwise you wouldn't be in law school But many of you are not good at managing stress just like I wasn't right Let's talk a little bit about some causes For me, I like to think of it as the perfect storm In my family in my family tree There's a lot of people with depression or bipolar or addiction problems I wasn't I never thought I would be one of those people because I didn't like to drink smoke Take drugs. I was a good kid good kid who got good grades, but looking back on it they believe that as much as 50 percent of People who develop depression have a genetic component to it The other thing that's important to recognize and there's a lot of research being done on trauma these days I Had a traumatic childhood my father was a severe alcoholic and I he died from alcoholism when he's 56 and I imagine that if We look back on it and he was evaluated They would have determined that he had either depression or bipolar disorder, you know at that time they didn't have Many resources to to to diagnose someone or treat them So I brought that risk factor with me into law school, right? genes trauma personality Most lawyers and I'll talk about this in a little bit They've studied this and not surprisingly many many people who go into law school and become lawyers are type a Personality types right their self starters They're driven They're perfectionists They are can be kind of pessimistic Okay, so there's a certain personality type that generally goes into law many many many exceptions but the studies have shown that there's that link and Finally, I think that's true for me personality-wise, but finally the stress of being a lawyer And when I talk about stress I often say, you know stress is a very good thing for much of my life And I think even now People are motivated by stress. So there's good stress, right? What I'm talking about is chronic unremitting perpetual stress which Humans were never didn't evolve to handle that kind of stress in their bodies in their brains so much of the law practice today and The experience of many lawyers is that there's just too much stress involved in the day-to-day life of being a lawyer So for me personally Each person may have a different story. It was the perfect storm of these Things that I think coalesced and created depression for me I mentioned personality. This is just a recap of what I was talking about highly ambitious How many of you raise your hands can it can identify with some of those qualities? More than a couple And I think one of the things that's interesting pessimism When we talk about pessimism and this has been Researched and written about as it relates to lawyer personalities. What it means is not so much Is the glass half-empty or half-fold? That's not what we're really talking about It's really it's called a cognitive explanatory style. All right, so it's a way of looking at the world in a negative way All right that puts you in the position of you're always looking for trouble All right, you're always problem-solving. You're always on your toes thinking something bad is gonna happen. Okay, and I as a lawyer and Many many many hundreds and hundreds of lawyers. I've talked to around the country Said that is dead-on and why is that dead-on? Because I'd walk into a courtroom or in a deposition and they'd be scanning my environment Looking for trouble Looking for an opposing counsel was going to be a jerk that day. I'm thinking I'm in for a long day, right? I better get my backup or It might be something as I'm sitting at my desk and I See a fat package come in from an opponent and it's a emotion You know on a case so you develop That capacity and I think it's often something They say it's you know, you're learned to think like a lawyer They say that in law school all the time or they did when I was a law student We're gonna teach you to think like a lawyer well Part of that thinking is this kind of thinking and what they found is that lawyers Who have this quality are very successful people? Okay, the problem is the problem is it while it may make you very successful It doesn't go a long way as far as establishing good mental health, right? People who are pessimistic don't necessarily have depression But most people who have depression are pessimistic or negative thinkers So that's another risk factor, right when we think about depression and what causes it And why lawyers have so much so many problems with that This is what I mean more specifically when I talk about stress and perpetual stress, okay? Fight or flight the adversarial nature of the profession winners losers time crunch little time for self-care Okay Some people when I lecture on this and I lecture to judges and trial lawyers They will say well You know That's just the way it is, you know, it is an adversarial profession. There are winners and losers and Or they might say most of these problems are attributable to trial lawyers or people with big law firms And the studies just don't bear that out These depression rates hold constant across people who are in government and private practice solo practice big law firms So there's something going on in the culture Of the law and that culture begins in law school, right? And then it continues on into the legal profession the thing that I had the most difficulty with I Think was number one and two and then the last one I Had always grown up in my family. It was a dysfunctional family This is an understatement But I was always kind of like the the good kid that the overachiever of the family hero in my family of five five kids so I got along by always being a kind of a pleasant conciliatory person and This idea that all lawyers or trial lawyers or litigators are pit bulls is just false Some of the nicest people I've ever met have been trial lawyers, but there are There is a group of people in in that Litigation group that are like that and those are the people I would dread the most and When that happened when I got those people Immediately my heart would start racing my I would sweat I Was terrified, you know, you couldn't show any of that but I was so I had the most difficulty with adversarial nature of the profession and Consequentially, I also had little time for self-care Which was a big problem Stigma the studies that I showed you earlier about law school and the high rates of Law students with depression What was interesting Was that not only were there high rates of law student depression and anxiety is that most of them didn't seek out any treatment of any kind whether it be with a The counseling department at the law school or at the university or off-site okay so They attributed most of the people who who responded to the study said the biggest reason was Stigma, you know being identified as somebody who had a mental problem or they cited privacy concerns or they talked about What's going to happen if my future employer finds out about this? Do I have to what if it comes up on the character and fitness part of becoming a lawyer? So that's a big deal and I think what we're finding is that law schools and Across the country and law firms and the legal profession is saying this isn't working You know stigmatizing people because what's happening is the depression rates and anxiety rates are not going down. They're going up By historically they're going up So there's a high cost to be paid with stigma I Think for me and it's different for every person, but in my family. I experienced stigma because many many people in my family it was really Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of family upbringing. My dad was a World War two veteran a kind of meat and potato, you know have a beer every night kind of guy and Certainly talking about one's feelings or one's mental health problems Weren't common at the dinner table so People experience Stigma at their job they can experience with it and their family when they come home and I think There's also this side of stigma. That's an inside job, right? Many many people with depression feel tremendous shame You know, they feel like they're less than or that they're there are losers I've heard that a lot or that they're broken people, you know, they're not good enough or those kind of things. I Think that's true because depression is such a powerful experience for most people and What's interesting is that? When you go through a depression many people with depression everything shuts down, right? They appear flat and motionless and lifeless, but they actually know that a lot is actually going on inside a person's brain When they're depressed, I started with an opening statement. So I'll have a closing argument Which some thoughts I have on this topic How many of you have taken trial technique? Oh Gee, this is a bad slide then, you know Are you saying to yourselves? I don't know what a closing argument is well It's at the end of a trial and I've had to give a lot of them Usually that's not a good sign if the jurors look like that, you know if they have that kind of expression of their faces And I've had a few juries like that but What I wanted to say and I think we're getting to the point that we all recognize What the problem is right too much stress toxic stress anxiety and depression in law schools We know there's a problem We now know and have identified some causes, right? We outline them here Law schools are responding beginning to respond as is the general legal culture But I think The proof is in the pudding with the recent study on law students that stigma is still a dominating factor that prevents Law students from getting treatment That's nationally true on a national level. That's true 80% of people Nationally don't get any treatment for the depression or anxiety Law students, it's about 50% that's still a lot a lot of people not getting help And I've been to too many law schools across the country Where law students have committed suicide just too many at every law school I've spoken at So when I When I talk about this I often that's why I don't come with a to-do list of things you can do You know, what can I do to feel better? What can I do to treat my depression? You know, I'm not going to do that today because I think many of you probably know what those things are or You can easily go on your smartphone and find out what they are exercise therapy medication so what I'd like to conclude with is To challenge you to think about these conditions differently, okay So what does that mean when I was a kid? This was my superhero. He really was and you you may know superman With different actors, you know But when I was a kid Christopher Reeve when I was a teenager a young man he was Superman and he could fly and do all this cool stuff and He was my hero But Something as you may know some of you may know or all of you may know The person who played that character had a tragic Accident how many people know about that raise your hands? Well, this will make the story even better the you know, he was involved in that Accident where his horse riding and was going over a fence One face forward and broke his neck and was in a wheelchair the rest of his life and One time I think it was on CNN I actually saw him interviewed and they asked him, you know, what is the hero? What is a hero, you know? People when they looked at him Thought he was very heroic in what he did This is what he said Which has always stayed with me and it's something I have on a card in my wallet a Hero is an ordinary individual Who finds a strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming odds? That stayed with me a long time I don't know why but then it worked its way into my thinking about stigma and How people still view people with mental health problems In a poor way, right? I mean they do often too often and how People struggling with these conditions view themselves that way Right? They're ashamed. They're broken. They're never gonna make it. They're never gonna be successful So in many ways, I think This fits fits well with what I'd like to leave you with in some measure and that you could take that quote finds the strength to persevere and I think In your profession in your law school time when you're here and when you go on to become lawyers Perseverance is a huge Part of being a successful lawyer huge, you know Some kind of saying that you know the kids who were on lock law review and got a's and that stuff They all became like appellate judges. So most of them are not real lawyers That's what you know my friends that I would say the majority of people who the B and C students, right? They're the working stiffs like me, you know, you go out and you got to work for a living You're not on the appellate division. So I would find Over my career The most important quality next to hard work because you're gonna work hard as a lawyer as you do as a law student the biggest thing That kept me going was perseverance Getting back up, you know, when you're knocked down In a case or in a legal matter You'll lose it's a win-loss kind of game oftentimes Getting back up and going forward. All right that lesson applies equally to mental health, right? It applies equally because when I think of people who struggle and there's millions of them walking around, you know How many people are there here today? I'll say 50 for the sake of our 60 would be easier So that means 20 of you have a Problem right now with anxiety or depression So if you don't have a problem look to your left or right and somebody probably does Right and that person is going through a tremendous Battle every day to keep going to class to show up on time Right to keep up with everybody And that demands a lot of perseverance and in my view that is a very heroic thing heroic the complete opposite of stigma right these people might not wear like, you know shiny metals on their lapel We don't have parades for them or bumper stickers But in my experience over the last ten years some of the best of the best of the best of the people I've met Persevere and our people who struggle with mental health problems and who want to achieve amazing things So I checked that box and They endure in spite of overwhelming odds right Just like going into the law, you know, you're the creme de la creme, you know It's not easy to get into law school. You're very privileged to be part of this great tradition this history of being part of our democracy So you hand to endure and overcome a lot of odds Right to be here and then you'll have to pass the bar exam. I was just talking to somebody who just took it Good luck It's it's a ordeal, but you're gonna have to endure that and overcome it but Getting back to depression and mental health. It's it's really the same thing because Mental health conditions many people when we talk about depression or anxiety Yes, there are solutions. Yes, there are solutions to treating these conditions but if you talk to many people Who suffer from them? You'll find out pretty quickly if you don't know already they live with them Most people do So in fact, they not only have to persevere. They have to endure They have to keep going. They have to keep hoping the things will get better and When I talk about overwhelming odds, I mean when we think of heroes, that's what we think of they've done something special, right? And that's how I think of people Lost students and lawyers who go into this extraordinarily challenging profession really tough profession And if that weren't enough, they're also carrying with them this tremendous load of Mental illness, right? That is a heroic thing and so for those of you here who Have one of these conditions You're a hero to me. I mean I from the bottom of my heart. I feel that way For those of you who don't suffer from one of these conditions You should really think about how you view somebody when You're told if you're fortunate enough to be told that someone suffers from one of these conditions They're not less than They're really heroes. They really are you know so Thanks for your time. I Didn't have a lot of time to cover an enormous topic. We could have talked probably for a few hours but I think I Wanted to get now to the documentary. I'll tell you very quickly what that is a Few years ago. We received three grants to create to hire a documentary filmmaker And the topic is depression in the legal profession. So we interviewed lawyers law students judge an expert in psychiatry an expert in psychology and a Lincoln scholar now why Lincoln you'll find out So I don't want to tip my to tell you too much sit back and just watch the film Thank you again to Dan LeCasic the deans and our wellness committee