1E9Ct5D

the third leading cause of death among attorneys, after cancer and heart disease. 17Astudy conducted by the National Institute for Safety and Health found that male lawyersbetween the ages of 20 and 64 are more than twice as likely to die from suicide thanmen of the same age in other occupations. (Those most at risk were lawyers and judgesaged 48 to 65.) A Canadian bar study puts attorney suicide at nearly six times thesuicide rate in the general population. 18B. Looking in the MirrorPsychologist Lynn Johnson points to two personality traits many lawyers have:perfectionism and pessimism. 19The Lawyers Helping Lawyers Commission, out ofSouth Carolina, made an interesting finding. Research suggested that those who sufferfrom intense perfectionism are at higher risk for suicide than those who do not. They aredriven by an intense need to avoid failure. To these people, nothing seems quite goodenough, and they are unable to derive satisfaction from what ordinarily might beconsidered even superior performance. 20As recently noted in Drug and Alcohol Abuse & Addiction in the Legal Profession, “thework of the legal profession requires communication, together with persuasion,creativity and consistency; lawyers learn to exhibit a professional demeanor and to hidetheir own alarm, fear, disgust, abhorrence, boredom, as we conduct our professional17 UTAH STATE BAR JOURNAL, August/September 2003.18 See note 4, supra.19 Lynn Johnson, Stress Management, UTAH STATE BAR JOURNAL, January/February 2003.20 Dr. Sidney J. Blatt, The Destructiveness of Perfectionism: Implications for the Treatment of Depression,AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, Volume 49, Number 12 (1997).9