Home » Health » A golden opportunity: The IBA and Acritas launch two Mental Wellbeing Surveys to the entire Legal Community

A golden opportunity: The IBA and Acritas launch two Mental Wellbeing Surveys to the entire Legal Community

Manel Atserias Luque. A young man with concerns.

Today is a great day. The International Bar Association (International Bar Association) and the research firm Acritas launch, internationally, two Mental Wellbeing Surveys to the entire Legal Community. One is addressed to legal professionals (lawyers, attorneys, judges, academics, etc.); the other at different organizations (law firms and colleges and companies).

For the purposes of said Survey, a healthy mental well-being It means that a person is “capable of realizing their own potential, coping with the normal stresses of life, working productively and fruitfully, and can make a contribution to their community.” This definition is inspired by the provisions of the World Health Organization

The Survey will answer fundamental questions for the legal sector: among others, what impact does being a lawyer have on our mental well-being? What do law firms do to help their employees? What can professional associations do to help their members? How can you work together to improve well-being in the legal profession?

Horacio Bernardes Neto, IBA President, acknowledges that he was “increasingly concerned about the frequency of reports of substance abuse, severe depression and cases of suicide within the profession” and stresses that “[L]The devastating effects of depression, stress, addiction, and other similar attacks on our well-being may have been present before the Coronavirus pandemic, but the pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated its impact. ”

The United States and the United Kingdom have already given the first signs

As I highlighted in my work “Well-being in law firms as an asset” in the Report “Innovation and Trends. Legal Sector 2020”By Wolters Kluwer, lawyers in the United States and the United Kingdom have extremely high levels of stress and anxiety, as well as other mental health problems (depression) and addictions (alcoholism and drugs).

Later, from the Mental Health Institute of Legal Profession – Mental Health Institute of Legal Professions and the Lefebvre publishing house we published the I Study on the Health and Well-being of the Spanish Legal Profession.

Now is the time to overcome the brand of participants of said Study. Now we have a golden opportunity to start working on this matter.

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