Last week, the London Times reported a tragic story about a successful woman lawyer committing suicide.
Catherine Bailey became a partner at SJ Berwin in London in 2003. She was married to a consultant kidney specialist, and had returned to work just before Christmas after the birth of her third daughter six months earlier. The couple also had a five- and four-year-old daughters. Bailey texted her husband to tell him that she was sorry and loved her family about 30 minutes before she was found in the River Thames.
Postnatal depression has been mentioned as a possible contributor to her decision, but people can't help but speculate that the stress of being a female lawyer also had to be part of the equation. Such a tragedy begs so many questions--are women facing greater pressure to produce once they return from maternity leave to make up for the time they were gone? How damaging is the guilt about being pulled in so many directions to one's emotional state? How does the perfectionist aspect of lawyers' personality magnify all these feelings?
One thing is clear: stress and depression of any kind must be taken seriously, and services such as Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers exist exactly for when things start to feel like too much. Listen to yourself, and to others, to help yourself or others before problems get too extreme.
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