MEASURING LAWYER MENTAL ILLNESS: EVIDENCE FROM TWO NATIONAL SURVEYS

Abstract

The American Bar Association declared a "well-being crisis" among lawyers, but the empirical basis for this claim has been contested in recent years. This study systematically compares two high-quality, nationally representative surveys-the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)-to measure the prevalence of mental illness and alcohol misuse among lawyers. In both surveys, lawyers report elevated rates of alcohol misuse compared to the general public and similarly educated peers. The NHIS finds that lawyers experience psychological distress at rates lower than the general public and similar to, or moderately higher than, similarly educated peers. But the NSDUH paints a different picture: over 40% report moderate or serious psychological distress in the past year. A rate significantly higher than those reported by the general public, similarly educated peers, and the rate found in the NHIS. While we are unable to explain fully all of the differences across the two national surveys, we resolve some of these differences by studying sensitivity to instrument validation and calibration and precisely aligning the measurements used in both surveys. To assess the remaining differences, we highlight several advantages of the NSDUH, including the privacy of data-gathering methods, additional clinically validated mental illness measures, and results that are more consistent with other national surveys. The persistent divergent findings from the NHIS and NSDUH underscore specific challenges in measuring mental illness and the importance of continued work on survey implementation, validation, analysis, and interpretation. 

Keywords: Lawyer Mental Health, Empirical Legal Studies, Empirical studies of the legal profession, Mental Health, Mental Illness