A new study on law student wellbeing shows that, despite efforts to improve student well-being, even more students are struggling with mental health. The study, It is Okay to Not be Okay: The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-being, recently published in the University of Louisville Law Review, provides an analysis of law student mental health for comparison with a similar effort from 2014.
The survey, administered in the Spring of 2021, garnered 5,400 student responses.
Over two-thirds of respondents, 69 percent, reported needing help for emotional or mental health problems in the past year. This was an increase from 42 percent from the 2014 study. Of the 69 percent, 56 percent received counseling or help from a mental health professional. Females were more likely to report that they sought help than males.
A larger percentage of students, 11 percent, reported experiencing suicidal thoughts in the past year. This is an uptick of five percentage points from 2014. About 5 percent of students reported that they had thought seriously about suicide in the last 30 days.
A larger subset of the law student population reported that they started law school with a previously diagnosed mental health issue. Nearly one-third of respondents reported that they had been diagnosed with depression (18 percent of this group was diagnosed after starting law school), compared to 18 percent in 2014. Nearly 40 percent of respondents reported they had received an anxiety diagnosis at some point in their life (22.5 percent of whom received the diagnosis after starting law school), a dramatic increase from 21 percent in 2014.
A slightly larger percentage of respondents reported using (with a prescription) sedative/anxiety medications in 2021 (15 percent) compared with 2014 (12 percent), while the percentage using antidepressant medication (again, with a prescription) almost doubled jumping from 12 percent in 2014 to 23 percent in 2021. Fewer students reported using prescription drugs without a prescription in 2021 (less than 12 percent) compared to 2014 (14 percent).
A bright spot amidst the alarming findings came in decreased binge drinking. The number of students who reported that they drank enough to get drunk in the past 30 days fell from 53 percent in 2014 to 44 percent in 2021. Similarly, the number who reported binge drinking at least once in the past two weeks fell from 43 percent to 33 percent. The researchers did note that the timing—spring of 2021—may have contributed to this decrease, as there were possibly fewer opportunities for “social drinking” during the pandemic.
David Jaffe, Associate Dean of Student Affairs at American University’s Washington College of Law and study co-author in 2014 and 2021, spoke to the findings in an interview with Reuters. "It's disappointing that we didn't make more headway as law schools generally," he said. "We still have our work cut out for us."