Mental Health and Law: How can Attorneys Improve their Wellbeing?

Author

Matthew RubleFollow

Publication Date

Spring 5-14-2025

Degree Level

B.A.

Program

Honors

First Advisor

Dr. Gustavo Guzman

Second Advisor

Dr. Camile Langston

Document Type

Thesis

Medium

manuscript

LCSH subject

Criminal Law

Abstract

Mental health is a concern for attorneys that affects elements such as well-being and performance. Poor mental health results in various risky behaviors such as substance abuse, depression, stress, vicarious trauma symptoms, and other issues. The legal profession requires tremendous commitment to the discipline’s work, and poor mental health prevents attorneys from achieving this outcome. Much research about the nature of mental health and law focuses on data prior to or during COVID-19. Literature is analyzed to provide a framework about the current knowledge of mental health in the legal profession. The literature discusses research studies about depression, secondary trauma, substance abuse, superiors’ work values and workplace culture, knowledge of mental health law among attorneys, occupational stress, somatization, COVID-19, and attorney disciplining. The following study analyzes previously collected data from Rosky and Garland’s Mindful Lawyering study. The data is analyzed through 3 procedures: descriptive statistics, correlation matrices and bivariate regression to test for significance, and OLS regression. Notable results include increases to the average mental health and negative effects scores, decreases to the average mindfulness technique and positive effect scores, the trend in April 2020 predicting January 2021 scores in two of the correlation matrices and enrollment in the Mindful Lawyering Program in 2020 having a significant effect on engaging in mindfulness practice. Limitations of the data analysis are discussed, and potential solutions are provided for future mental health studies in the legal discipline. Further research should be done using Rosky and Garland’s model to test the effectiveness of mindfulness.

Recommended Citation

Ruble M. (2025). Mental Health and Law: How can Attorneys Improve their Wellbeing? [Honors thesis, St. Mary's University].

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.