Olympic gymnast Simone Biles earlier this year highlighted the ongoing stigma around mental health and disclosure when she stepped back from the Olympics to focus on her own well-being. A recent article from the Harvard Business Review asks an important question: As a manager, how can you prepare yourself for these conversations with your employees? Or, what can you do if you’re the one personally struggling with mental health at work? To help navigate those questions, the article gives a list of book recommendations for individuals and managers. Find all the suggested reading here.

Well-being in the workplace is a big issue these days. If you've got a team of 50 or more at work, check out this free 30-day challenge from Wisdom Labs, for creating an environment that your best people want to come back to, with real, measurable results.

The final installment of the TBA’s video series on quick tips for attorney well-being covers stress relief. Attorneys are faced with specific stressors and licensed psychotherapist Lindsey O’Connell offers several quick and easy techniques you can use to help control your stress level. One technique O’Connell offers is sensory integration. Sit still and focus on one sense at a time—what do you hear? See? Feel? Focusing in on one sense and taking note of how you feel in the moment helps ground you in the present and resets your thoughts. Watch the short video for additional tips and make sure to catch all episodes in the series on the TBA’s YouTube page.

Do you set goals with intention? The third installment of the TBA’s video series on quick tips for attorney well-being covers effective goal setting. In this week’s short video, licensed psychotherapist Lindsey O’Connell discusses the importance of setting intentional goals that enhance your life and provide you with tools needed to overcome challenges. To accomplish this, O’Connell suggests implementing the SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timebound—goal technique. Learn more about the technique and other tips for goal setting on the TBA’s YouTube page.

Licensed psychotherapist Lindsey O’Connell is back for the second installment of the TBA’s video series of quick tips for attorney well-being. This week, O’Connell gives advice on how to overcome three categories of thought distortions: catastrophizing, perfectionism and mind reading. One tip is to utilize the “Catch, Challenge and Change” technique by noticing a distorted thought, challenging that thought and replacing it with new and true ideas that both support and ground you in reality. “The bottom line is, you don’t have to listen to every thought that comes to mind,” O’Connell says. “Sometimes, learning to filter your thoughts is just the skill you need in order to feel your best.” Watch the video now on the TBA’s YouTube page.

A series of short videos featuring quick tips for attorney well-being are now available on the TBA’s YouTube page. Licensed psychotherapist Lindsey O’Connell leads the videos, which cover stress relief, goal setting, overcoming thought distortion and more. Today’s theme is Personal Wellness. O’Connell gives helpful recommendations on building meaningful resilience to help overcome the challenges practicing law presents.

A plethora of mental health apps are flooding the market, but there is little evidence to support many of their claims of effectiveness, Harvard Medical School assistant professor John Torous writes in the Harvard Business Journal. As employers look for ways to support employees’ mental health, he and his co-author Elena Rodriguez-Villa, a global researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, outline three points to keep in mind. (1) Apps will not cure anyone and are not an alternative to robust health care coverage at a reasonable price. (2) With hundreds of apps on the market, thorough research is needed. To help evaluate options, the free M-Health Index and Navigation Database offers information on 400 apps across 105 dimensions. (3) If an app is offered, be sure to track impact by checking in with employees on how they're doing — and if they are actually using the tool.

In a recent article for Reuters, Chicago attorney Ed Shapiro suggests several ways law firms can promote professional development, while simultaneously supporting the mental health of attorneys. Shapiro emphasizes the importance of mentor groups within law firms “that advance professional development while creating safe spaces within which attorneys can share their struggles and get the support they need.” He acknowledges that, while the legal profession as a whole might have thrived during the pandemic, some attorneys may feel as though they didn’t “crush it” during quarantine and that they could’ve done more. It’s important, he says, for those attorneys to know they’re not alone and to offer them a space in which they can be vulnerable. Read the full article here.  

Nearly half of lawyers responding to a Bloomberg Law survey said their well-being declined over the first quarter of this year and the problem was even worse for junior lawyers. The Attorney Workload & Hours Survey found that lawyers facing troubled personal relationships, physical health issues or depression were twice as often to report their well-being had worsened. Lawyers with billable hours reported working an average of 53 hours per week, the same as last year. But respondents said they experienced burnout an average of 50% of the time in the first quarter, up from a 40% average in 2020. For junior and mid-level associates, two-thirds reported a decline in well-being, compared to 41% of senior associates.

There is a general trend toward pursuing productivity, with lawyers trying to find the next productivity app, hack or guru, legal innovator Olga V. Mack writes in Above the Law. And while getting more organized or pursuing self-improvement is not bad, she cautions against falling into the trap of toxic productivity. She defines the term as trying to schedule the maximum amount of output for every minute of the day, filling every moment with back-to-back meetings, projects or research, with little-to-no time for breaks. Toxic productivity assumes we can always perform at our best and all we must do is pack our days. But reality does not agree, she argues. Instead, she says, recognize you can’t do it all alone and then find a support group or other structure that allows you to distribute your load equally and sustainably.