More than a third of NZ-based lawyers and students reported moderate to severe psychological distress in a recent survey. File photo. Photo: 123rf
Lawyers in New Zealand are facing a mental health crisis, a psychologist says, with a new survey finding lawyers in Aotearoa are among the unhappiest in the world.
The University of Melbourne surveyed 800 New Zealand-based lawyers and law students between 2021 and 2023, with more than a third of them reporting moderate to severe psychological distress.
The survey was commissioned by the Life Squared Trust, which was founded to raise awareness and promote mental health in the local legal profession.
It also found that a quarter of those experiencing distress would describe it as severe or extremely severe.
Life Squared Trust spokesperson and psychologist Jacki McGuire told RNZ that those experiencing that level of distress were dealing with low moods, irritability and a drop in critical thought, to the point it was getting in the way of their life.
"When you are scoring severe on a psychological test, that is a clear measure that the symptoms you are experiencing are well beyond the norm."
She said there had been grave concerns around mental well-being in the legal profession since the 1980s, but this was the first NZ-specific data.
McGuire said lawyers were taught and encouraged to be adversarial and pessimistic, neither of which were great for mental health.
"There is an adversarial nature to lawyers thoughts, they are designed to pick problems or see problems early for clients. And pessimism - which equals prudence in the law profession - is actually linked to high job performance, they are the only profession when pessimism is linked to that."
She said pressure from clients, long hours and heavy workload all contributed to the problem, and that lawyers were not immune to issues facing people in many professions.
"I think we could look culturally at New Zealand, we know unfortunately that our mental health statistics aren't fantastic across the board
"We know we have got to get better at connecting, speaking emotionally, being transparent in our communications. Those are factors that make significant differences to peoples mental health and well-being."