Additional menu

Pamela DeNeuve

Lawyer & Law Firm Peak Performance Strategist

Attorneys Team UP With U.S. Presidents & Great World Leaders!

posted on

Share
Tweet
Pin
0 Shares

Greatness and mental challenges can go hand in hand. Why lawyers are shunned or embarrassed because of their mental struggles is absurd.

One in four lawyers suffer from depression. Now is the time for the legal profession to embrace these challenges on a larger scale as a sign of greatness instead of sweeping these statistics under the rug. Guidance and support should be made readily available. These gladiators for the law face many crises with mastery, often sacrificing their own well-being that causes them to become depressed over time.

 No Surprise: Depression is Everywhere

If you suffer due to any mental condition, be it depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder; don’t be ashamed, you are in good company.

According to Duke University researchers, 49% of former presidents had experienced some form of mental illness. Depression was the most common type of presidential mental illness (24%), which some experts say is a high percentage compared with the national average. However, this number is close to the percentage for lawyers.

Meet Heather

One of my clients Heather learned to embrace her depression. “Pamela before, I tried to hide my depression, even from myself. I couldn’t face it, and I saw my depression as a sign of weakness. You have helped me to embrace my condition and take precautions as if I had diabetes. This approach has made all of the difference for me.”

As Heather’s coach, it was my job to make sure she worked with her psychiatrist with medications, and she was able to manage her mental darkness with regular exercise, modifications in her diet, drinking lots of water, to begin proper sleep habits and to stay on top of her billable hours.

Meet Phillip

My client Phillip bordered on suicidal tendencies when we first met. “Pamela, I put a smile on my face, but I can’t go on this way.”

We had to take immediate and drastic with Phillip, which included changing his psychiatrist to someone who was up to date on the more current medications, temporarily increasing visits for counseling and regular coaching. Phillip had suffered for years from chronic insomnia. I coached him to make modifications in his caffeine intake and to stop eating heavy meals and drinking alcohol after six p.m. Once he got his sleep in order; he got up early and took a brisk walk before going into the office.

Phillip’s big smile told me what I wanted to hear. “Pamela, I didn’t think that I would ever be able to function so well, and my bouts of dark depression are almost gone completely.”

Before we list the great leaders, who experienced, psychological complications, let us talk about how prevalent this “taboo” subject is.

32 Million Americans – 305,000 Attorneys

As of July 2015, the population in the USA was 321,216,397. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 1 in 10 Americans suffers from depression. That means that 32 Million Americans are depressed. These numbers are more than likely conservative.

Lawyers have a much greater ratio of depression than the general population. There are approximately 1.22 Million lawyers in the US. Since 1 out of every 4 lawyers is depressed, approximately 305,000 of the attorneys in our country are afflicted. Unless this challenge is addressed in a more proactive and empowering way, this statistic will only increase.

Greatness & Depression

History proves that people can achieve great things despite mental illness including depression. Depression knows no boundaries. It doesn’t matter if you are rich, poor, young, old, or even the President. Anyone can be vulnerable to the depths of depression.

Individuals like Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs, marketing genius Henry J Heinz, librarian Melvil Dewey, aviator Charles Lindbergh, beauty tycoon Estée Lauder, and baseball slugger Ted Williams. All suffered from some sort of mental malady. Mental illness is not something an individual chooses any more than people would choose to have diabetes or cancer. There are many factors that contribute to these conditions, which also includes genetics.

Since we are not in the dark ages, it is important that many of the larger law firms face these statistics proactively instead of acting as if this widespread condition does not exist.

Depressed Presidents

Let’s begin our list with U.S. Presidents, our history makers who suffered from depression:

  1. John Adams
  2. Thomas Jefferson
  3. James Madison
  4. John Quincy Adams
  5. Franklin Pierce
  6. Abraham Lincoln
  7. Calvin Coolidge
  8. Rutherford B Hayes
  9. Theodore Roosevelt
  10. Woodrow Wilson
  11. Herbert Hoover
  12. Dwight Eisenhower
  13. Lyndon Johnson

Depressed Powerful Leaders

In addition to U.S. Presidents, there were also other powerful leaders who showed signs of serious mental instability and were greater leaders than any normal people could have been:

  1. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  2. Winston Churchill
  3. Mohandas Gandhi

Depressed Leaders Prove to be Great in Crisis

According to Nassir Ghaemi, a Tufts University psychiatry professor, in an article in The Wall Street Journal adapted from his new book, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness. He says mentally healthy people make fine leaders when times are good, and the challenges are easy, but “in times of crisis and tumult, those who are mentally abnormal, even ill, become the greatest leaders.

We can ask the question: “Do greatness and mental challenges go hand in hand?”  There is much information that seems to indicate that this can be true in many cases. Instead, of lawyers feeling ashamed of depression, why not wear this mental condition as a sign of greatness.

Meanwhile, lawyers want to take responsibility for their own mental health and get help. Do not try to overcome these complexities alone.

Attorney Balance Your Life Coach

★Pamela Helps Attorneys To Revive Your Law Practice★

Time to Defeat:

★Burnout ★Stress ★ Anxiety ★  Depression ★ Addictions★ 

(20 Years Experience)

45 minute free consultation 

About Pamela

Click Link https://calendly.com/pdeneuve or email pamela@boldandbravelegalladies.com

Links

For more information about presidents and mental illness, please refer to the following Health Central articles: http://www.healthcentral.com/depression/c/84292/150467/7-depression/#sthash.s702Iy5l.dpuf

7 Presidents who Battled Depression

http://www.healthcentral.com/depression/c/84292/150467/7-depression/

50 famous people with depression, mental illness

http://www.wcvb.com/health/14414700

 Madness Made Them Great  Thomas Jefferson, Steve Jobs, Estée Lauder, and Charles Lindbergh suffered from the same mental illness.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/business_success_from_mental_illness_steve_jobs_henry_heinz_and_est_e_lauder.html

Does Being Seriously Depressed Make You a Better Leader?http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/07/31/does-being-seriously-depressed-make-you-a-better-leader/

Share
Tweet
Pin
0 Shares

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Quotes from our Lawyer of the Week

  • I am here to protect the human rights and I will do the best in my capacity to do so.
    Diana Constantinidou
  • I love this work. I really do. To me, especially now more than ever, we need a strong news media. It’s not just a business. It’s part of our democracy.
    Edward Birk
  • You don’t have to be large and on the world stage to seize these opportunities and to apprehend these threats. It really is a function of the vision and the insight of the leaders. When they get it, then there’s an opportunity for them to persuade and help their partners get the message and act to remake themselves.
    George Beaton
  • I did not intend to create this legacy, but I see the ripple effects of it, and it’s so meaningful to me. I think that through the podcast, I’m also hoping to create a legacy of service to the profession.
    Okeoma Moronu
  • That’s one of the things that I find very satisfying; building bridges between people from different countries, working closely with them and seeking those deeply satisfying relationships that are created in cross-border trade and investment facilitation.
    John Grimley
  • I’m very lucky to have a family and a wife that absolutely just creates a life that’s there and that one can go to. I think about the stress that we experience in our work, that is the best we can offer. So I really live for that. It’s something to be grateful for.
    Nic Swart
  • The legacy that I want to leave in the work that I’m doing is having made a difference and having hopefully spearheaded some type of meaningful change in the culture of the legal profession, as it relates to addiction and mental health specifically.
    Patrick Krill
  • It’s not so much my practice that I want to make a difference in, but I want to know that I left the legal professional a little bit better than I found it.
    Courtney Wylie
  • the real reality is some of the lawyers, some of the law firms, are going to be left behind because they’re not moving into the current reality where they can’t just rely on referrals.
    Montina Portis
  • When you take a lawyer out of the system, you take the voice and the ability of the people to protect themselves from overreaching government and overreaching organizations out the equation.
    Ian Connor Bifferato
  • I think a lot of attorneys are very, obviously, economically driven, which is fine, because we all need to make a living. But, at the end of the day, I also think that we are in this profession to give back and I would like to see that happen to a greater degree.
    Dr. Jeanne-Mari Reteif
  • "I would like my clients to think of me as of being a valuable resource to them and a knowledgeable resource that helped them protect their business and the most valuable assets of their business, which is their inventions, their ideas, their brand and that they remember me as somebody they could go to at any time to help them protect their intellectual property assets.
    Crystal T. Broughan
  • The person I’m looking for is the one who is going to come along and say ok; we can’t just tweak what we do with law; we have to radically re-invent it.
    Ken Grady
  • So you have to be that person who is challenged again and again so that you will grow as an expert.
    Dr. Peter MacMillan
  • I always tell my clients and my friends and colleagues, it’s a two-way road. You know- you give, and you receive, you give back, and it keeps going that way. It’s wonderful.
    Fernanda Alem-Freitas
  • In terms of successes, I will tell you, having done this, I’ve gone much further and made more connections and more friends and more inroads into the industry much earlier in my career than I ever could have possibly imagined.
    Gene Quinn
  • my thinking was that I really need to understand what clients really wanted. So in order to really do a good job, I needed to find out what moves them, what kept them up at night.
    Silvia Hodges Silverstein
  • So when we talk about a legacy, it’s a legacy that people to this day tell me — oh, I remember working with your Grandfather and he was such an upright man. Wow, let’s hope they say that about me.
    Jordan W. Charness
  • this answer made me to become a lawyer instead of a mathematician.
    Anandavasagan K.
  • What I want to try to do is create the beacon, or the light toward, developing law firm culture, as in the legal profession culture in general...where they do find a sense of meaning, purpose, connection, joy and want to stay in the profession.
    Anne Brafford
  • it is my goal to try to increase diversity within our profession, and even for as long as I’m here, I will advocate for the inclusion of different perspectives, different peoples, and different ideas that can make this world a better place.
    Robert Johnson
  • I have learned a lot of things the hard way and if I can help others sort of avoid the mistakes I’ve made and have the vision I lacked, then that’s how I want to help
    Frank Ramos
  • "I’m sort of traditional with an edge. I have respect for tradition. I have respect for history, but I’m also very inquisitive. I like to, you know, sort of architect things.
    Mark A. Cohen
  • I am all or nothing. I believe that the world has enough mediocre people. I had a mentor tell me that once and I give 110% to everything I do.
    LaKeisha Randall
  • You’ll never know how high that peak can be unless you find recovery, and with recovery, anything is possible
    Brian Cuban
  • Being able to live and work anywhere in the world. And we do live, you know- we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, in County Cork, Ireland now.
    Walt Hampton
  • You know, the best thing that anyone could possibly do is think about what’s important to them and get back to that really basic thing. Personally, professionally, financially. You know, where would you like to be? Because you can be there if you take a couple steps, you know? And it just- it can be incremental
    Bridget Venus Grimes
  • The people I represent have their own families and their own spouses and I see that vividly through my own experiences and trying to help them. I often try to, although perhaps not the easiest thing to do, but try to put myself into their shoes and approach a case with that regard.
    Mark A. Torres
  • My legacy really is to try to enhance the wellness of the members of our profession and to open up this dialog.
    Heidi K. Brown
  • At the end of my days, I want people to look back and say, "Yes, he really did make the world a better place and here are some concrete examples of places where he's influenced people, or influenced organizations, or cultures." So, if I can do that and leave that to the world, then I think I've done a pretty good job.
    Maurice L. Rabb
  • Pamela helped brought us a $12MM deal and was a key player to help finalize the negotiations. She was a valuable investment for our firm with a magnificent return on our investment.
    Bill L., Chairman of Litigation
  • I was on the verge of losing it. I felt confused and had no idea why I was practicing law in the first place. Pamela helped me to regain my enthusiasm and grow my practice enjoy my life again.
    Lewis M., Partner
  • I have worked as an in-house attorney for 20+ years with major corporations. I hired Pamela during a transition in my career. When I began working with Pamela, I needed clarity and direction as I forged a new path. Through Pamela's unique coaching techniques, I learned a tremendous amount about myself and what I wanted out of life. She helped me put plans in place, encouraged me and held me accountable for taking necessary actions. Coaching is clearly not just a business for Pamela. She truly cared about me and repeatedly went above and beyond to help me achieve the goals I set for myself. Pamela is highly knowledgeable and accomplished and I trust her judgment and coaching. I would highly recommend her to anyone who is looking to make a job or career change.
    Renee Cogdell Lewis
  • Why should only sports figures get coaches? I represent whistleblowers in highly complicated litigation cases. The work is stressful and I can't afford to be distracted or unfocused. Maybe some lawyer out there finds that easy, but if any lawyer/mom/wife does, I'd like to meet her. I needed to be at my peak ALL the time so I hired Pamela DeNeuve as my coach and -- wow! Hiring Pamela is like having someone right there with me in my practice as coach, mentor, confidant, and troubleshooter. I am on my A+ game thanks to Pamela.
    Lee Wallace
  • Pamela DeNeuve works with powerful men and women who look to the world like they have it all together. So that includes everyone who is successful because we all have skeletons in our closet. We all have an area of life that is painful or frustrating. While I looked like I had it all, a beautiful wife, a son who I have a great relationship and a long-time financial career, a growing business as a motivational speaker, something was missing. Something was off and I couldn't put my finger on it. Working with Pamela DeNeuve is one of the best things I have ever done. Her insight, her showing me the blind spots that I tried to ignore or avoid was an awakening. I have regained my enthusiasm again. I wake up with the wonder and excitement I had lost as the years wore on. I highly recommend Pamela DeNeuve's 8-hour intensive session. You will make quantum leaps in your career, increase your income and your wife will become the love of your life again.
    Tom Heitz
  • Any lawyer or law firm who want to expand their practice, increase client base, or re-ignite your love of the law will be wise to work with Pamela DeNeuve as your business/marketing coach. She has more than 25 years of experience working with AM100 law firms, small firms, and individual lawyers across the United States, in Asia, and South Africa. Pamela understands all aspects of the legal profession. She understands the challenges that we attorneys face. I retained Pamela to help with business development and some special projects in my First Amendment/Communications law practice. Almost immediately, I started to once again see opportunities in the challenges rather than the other way 'round. Practicing law is more enjoyable because of this work with Pamela. Asking for help is sometimes the hardest ask of all. After working with Pamela for her help, I'm glad I asked. I highly recommend her to any attorney or firm.
    Edward Birk