Addressing mental health in law school

With many Canadian law students struggling with mental health concerns, some law schools are developing innovative ways to promote student wellness. 

A 2012 survey by the Canadian Bar Association showed that 58% of lawyers, judges and law students reported they had experienced significant stress or burnout, and 48% had experienced anxiety.

“The best place to begin teaching people how to handle their mental health and well-being is in law school,” says Anna Kline, a counsellor and manager of student well-being at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. Teaching students techniques to enhance their well-being is essential to preparing them for the legal profession, says Dr. Virginia Torrie, the associate dean at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law. “Providing strategies for our students to manage things like stress and anxiety can begin in law school and then would exist when they are in practice as well,” she says.

Both Kline and Torrie agree that law schools need to address mental health both reactively and proactively.

Reactively, Kline says it’s about being prepared to assist students in crises. “When students are in distress, having someone who is specialized to deal with that in the moment is super important,” she says.

Many Canadian law schools, including UBC, the University of Manitoba and the University of Windsor, have embedded counselors.

But it is just as essential to address well-being proactively, says Kline.

“When you look at the progress of mental health and well-being, if you can intervene at an earlier stage, recovery is quicker and easier,” she says.

And it can help to destigmatize mental health issues by empowering students. “If you only talk about mental health while you are in crisis, then it is kind of an implicit stigma that goes along with even having the conversation,” says Torrie. “It is important to think about it being an ongoing practice and something that people are talking about because they want to be well.”

“The law school environment can be stress and anxiety-inducing,” says Mark Omenugha, a law student at the University of Windsor. “The promotion of student mental health and wellness will build better legal practitioners and ensure that students turn to healthier coping mechanisms.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed additional challenges for mental health among law students.

Ariel Wyse, also a student at Windsor, says she’s noticed a significant change in the mental health of her classmates during the pandemic. Some feel exhausted; others feel isolated and disconnected.

“Attending school online can be challenging on its own,” she says. “When combined with the isolation experienced in a global pandemic, students are required to continue an education in less-than-ideal environments. Many students are stressed, anxious, dealing with burnout or other mental health issues.”

According to Kline, who's been in her position since 2018, “the pandemic has exacerbated any mental health condition that students may have had. Hence the growing demand for counseling and services.

“However, the silver lining is that mental health discussions are much more normalized than they were before the pandemic,” says Torrie. “That is a good thing,” she adds.

To assist with student wellness, the University of Manitoba has hosted a series of talks on mindfulness, vicarious trauma, and the stigma of mental health concerns.

“Because of the stigma, it’s reassuring for law students to hear from other lawyers, professors or people working in the legal profession. It makes you feel like this is a shared experience, and a lot of lawyers struggle with stress and anxiety,” says Torrie. “I want students to take ownership and feel a sense of empowerment that they can be in charge of their mental health and they are actively working towards mental wellness and helping to equip them with strategies and tools that they can implement to do that.”

Kline says that UBC has been actively working to equip students with proactive techniques to assist with wellness, such as deep breathing to control stress. It has also developed a lawyer well-being mentor program involving 30 working lawyers who have experienced anxiety and depression. The mentors get paired up with students facing similar challenges. “It’s been a really empowering program,” says Kline.

UBC has also launched an emotional intelligence development program for law students to understand the importance of these skills in legal practice. Students can take a quiz to gain insight into themselves and then complete online exercises to improve their abilities.

At Windsor, Omenugha and Wyse co-chair the Mental Health and Wellness Initiative, which is collaborating with the faculty’s clinical therapist to promote mental health among their classmates. This includes planning programs on mindfulness and anti-racism.

These wellness initiatives are important, says Torrie.  “We can get caught in thinking that if you have a problem, you need to see a counselor. But that’s a ‘one size fits all’ solution,” says Torrie. “There is more than one way to promote good mental health with things like exercise, getting enough rest. We try to give the students a whole toolkit of strategies and approaches.”