By Faye A. Silas
The Florida Bar will forward a proposed new rule to the Florida Supreme Court in January that expands the category of mandated minimum continuing legal education hours to include courses that address mental illness awareness.All Florida lawyers must take at least 30 hours of MCLE every three years. Of those 30 hours, a minimum of five hours must include classes in legal ethics, professionalism and/or substance abuse education. If the Supreme Court gives its approval, mental illness awareness will be included in the mandatory offerings, and it is believed that Florida would be the first state to include this provision in its CLE requirements.
The issue was brought to the board by Angela Vickers, a Jacksonville lawyer and mental health advocate, and Ernst Mueller, chair of the Jacksonville Bar Association’s Committee on Law & the Disabled. Both say mental illness, most specifically depression, afflicts the legal profession in high percentages, but the stigma attached to the disease often inhibits lawyers from seeking assistance. (See cover articles on depression, Bar Leader, March-April 1998.)
"Most people in need of psychiatric care and medication refuse help because of fear of discrimination . . . . Untreated brain disorders cause much, if not most, of bar members’ misconduct, including alcohol and substance abuse problems," says Vickers, who was diagnosed with manic-depression in 1988. Since her single manic episode, which lasted two months, Vickers has remained well and stabilized with medication. Adds Mueller, "People are horribly prejudiced about mental illness, but it affects everyday lives." A former federal prosecutor and current counsel in the City of Jacksonville’s Office of General Practice, Mueller has a 26-year-old son who has schizophrenia.
Vickers and Mueller originally planned to submit their proposal directly to the Supreme Court by way of petition, a process that requires 50 signatures from bar members and publication of the proposal to bar members 90 days before the filing date. However, in their attempt to gain greater buy-in on the issue, they later decided to seek approval from The Florida Bar’s Board of Governors first.
The board unanimously approved the measure in May, during which time several board members expressed impassioned reasons for supporting it. Board member John Cardillo of Naples testified about the need for greater mental illness awareness by referring to a mental health outreach group he started in his judicial district about eight years ago as a way to stem a large number of suicides.
"Several young lawyers committed suicide, about five or six in seven years," Cardillo says. "If substance abuse is the problem, we know what to do. But for lawyers facing depression, there was no one to go to. To ignore depression is to say it doesn’t exist."
A 1991 study by Johns Hopkins University found that lawyers ranked first on the list of occupations that were most depressed. (See depression cover stories, Bar Leader, March-April 1998.)
While the board’s vote on the measure was unanimous, the bar’s Board of Legal Education and Specialization, which has jurisdiction over the MCLE program, opposed the idea in its review of the proposal. It also recommended that the substance abuse provision be dropped from the 5-hour mandatory requirement because such special requirements might open the floodgates to similar petitions from other interest groups that want their special interests included in the MCLE rule. However, the Board of Governors disregarded this argument.
Florida Lawyers Assistance, Inc. (FLA), the bar’s 13-year-old program that provides assistance to lawyers suffering from substance abuse and, more recently, emotional problems, railed against dropping the substance abuse requirement. Since it was added to the 5-hour mandatory hours in 1997, the requirement appears to have raised the level of awareness about substance abuse issues, says FLA Executive Director Michael Cohen of Tallahassee.
"The bar is more concerned with impairment," says Cohen. "For more than a decade, we’ve been trying to educate the bar and lawyers in general."
Approximately 60 percent of FLA’s cases relate to chemical dependency. The remaining 40 percent include mental health, marital and financial problems, and compulsive disorders of gambling and sex addictions, Cohen says. The assistance program has seen an increase in the number of lawyers who suffer from depression-related illnesses. Currently, these cases are referred to mental health resources in the community. But FLA hopes to hire a clinical psychologist on its staff to handle matters directly as part of its broad-brushed approach in handling lawyer impairments, he adds. While FLA already integrates depression, stress and related issues into its existing CLE offerings, Cohen says classes specifically dealing with depression and mental illnesses won’t hurt.
"It’s an indication of how seriously the (Board of Governors) viewed this issue," he remarks.
Since April, FLA has sponsored five mental health support groups located in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. About 60 lawyers participate between the five groups in 1-1/2 hour weekly meetings that are facilitated by a mental health professional in those communities.
Like Florida, several states with Lawyer Assistance Programs have rules that broaden the scope of their efforts to include mental impairments. Sixty-seven bars had an organized entity or program that dealt with stress, depression or other psychological problems, according to the 1998 Bar Activities Inventory, published by the American Bar Association Division for Bar Services.
The author is the editor of Bar Leader.
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