Social scientists have researched and examined the relationship between material well-being and emotional well-being or happiness. For most of the world, greater levels of material wealth have led to greater levels of perceived emotional well-being—most everywhere, that is, but in the United States. (The Atlantic, January/February 2003). In the United States, the total numbers of […]
Archive for the ‘Depression & Suicide’ Category
Recovery as a Process
Posted byIn September 2005 I was driving down I-95 to a Florida treatment center for what I believed would be a 90-day stay in beautiful South Florida. I really did not know much about where I was going or what I was going to do, but Ed Ward of the North Carolina Lawyers Assistance Program had […]
You Can Trust That Assistance is Confidential and Reliable
Posted byThe legal profession is a helping profession. Most days lawyers find themselves trying to solve problems for their clients. We are paid to have answers and to fix situations that have gone awry. One of the difficulties for professionals who are supposed to have the answers for others is that it is difficult for them […]
Accommodation or Transformation
Posted byThe heart is the literal and metaphorical center of our lives. We have either an open heart toward life or we may be closed hearted. Our response toward life may be one full of heartache or heartfelt joy. All of us have issues and challenges from time to time. How we respond will tell us […]
Healthy Relationships as Alternative Medicine
Posted byWhat is alternative about alternative medicine? Increasingly we note that main stream pharmaceutical companies are mass producing and selling the most popular herbal remedies such as St. John’s Wort and echinacea-goldenseal. Acupuncture is now covered by some insurance companies for certain medical problems. Recently, I was at an addictions conference and a former medical school […]
Thriving Through Depression: Beethoven
Posted byCase Study A. This is a lawyer 31 years old who works for a prestigious law firm in a North Carolina city. He is married, has two children, and makes over a $100,000 a year. He works 60 hours a week and tries to bill at least 2000 hours a year. He finds himself waking […]
Good Mental Health and the Lawyer’s Gift
Posted by“The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him — it cannot fail” –Walt Whitman. In a recent speech in Laramie Wyoming, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted that job dissatisfaction among lawyers was widespread, profound, and growing. She added that attorneys are more than three times as likely to suffer […]
Hammurabi and Addiction
Posted byNot too long ago the headline for this column was “The Chemistry of Self-Centeredness” (Bar Journal, Winter 1997, vol. 2 # 4). In the Bill Moyers special on addiction, the hour entitled “The Hijacked Brain” demonstrated how the brain is actually changed by addiction, how the neurochemistry of selfishness occurs. Maybe that is one reason […]
Hope
Posted byOne of the most difficult aspects of helping a person struggling with alcoholism or depression is to be able to bring hope. We don’t derive hope from taking tests for alcoholism or depression, or from hearing a lecture about these subjects. Mainly we get hope from hearing the experience of a recovering person, and identifying […]
Lawyer Suicide
Posted bySociety puts the burden of coming to grips with homicide on lawyers and the justice system. It is a lawyer’s job to prosecute the accused, try the case, and defend the accused. Yet, more people in America die of suicide than from homicide. Unlike the elaborate justice system, with its guaranteed right of appeal for […]