Mental Health for Lawyers in Massachusetts

You already know the profession is hard on people. The research confirms it (in a landmark ABA study of nearly 13,000 attorneys, 28% reported depression and 21% reported problematic drinking), but you didn't need a study to tell you what the work costs. You've been paying it. I understand that cost in a way most psychiatrists don't, because I practiced law before I practiced medicine. I've sat where you're sitting and worked inside a culture that treats asking for help as a kind of weakness. If you've been thinking about reaching out but haven't yet, the questions below are a good place to start.

  • Because I won't waste your time explaining what a billable hour does to a person.

    Before medical school, I practiced at an elite law firm. I understand the incentive structures, the professional identity questions, and the specific reasons you've probably put off making this call. I left that career deliberately, trained in psychiatry at Harvard, and now hold a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School. I bring both degrees into the room with every patient.

    Most mental health professionals will listen to you describe your work and then suggest you set better boundaries. That's not wrong, exactly, but it misses the structural reality: legal practice rewards perfectionism, penalizes vulnerability, and treats exhaustion as a credential. You don't need to educate me on your world. We can get to work.

  • This is the question I hear most from attorneys. The direct answer: seeking treatment is not the problem. Avoiding treatment when you need it is.

    Most state bars (including Massachusetts) have moved away from broad mental health inquiries in character and fitness evaluations. The ABA has been explicit that untreated conditions pose a greater professional risk than treated ones. I'm happy to discuss the specifics of your jurisdiction during a consultation.

    Your treatment is private. I am bound by strict physician confidentiality protections and do not report to your firm, your bar association, or anyone else.

  • Maybe not. But "functioning fine" is a term I've learned to listen to carefully.

    Many of the attorneys I see are, by every external metric, doing well: making partner, winning cases, earning respect. They come in because the internal cost of maintaining that performance has become unsustainable. The sleep that never quite comes. The irritability that's eroding a marriage. The Sunday dread that starts earlier every week.

    High-functioning depression is still depression. And the attorneys who come in before it gets bad are the ones who get the most out of treatment, because they still have choices, energy, and relationships to protect.

  • I respect that, and I structure treatment accordingly.

    I'm one of a very small number of psychiatrists who provide both medication management and psychotherapy in an integrated practice. That means one clinician who understands the full picture (your history, your neurochemistry, the actual texture of your daily life) rather than splitting your care between a prescriber you see for fifteen minutes and a therapist who doesn't know what the prescriber is doing.

    Sessions are 25 to 60 minutes depending on your needs. We'll set goals together. Some patients need targeted, time-limited work; others want ongoing therapy with someone who won't tell them to quit their job (because that isn't the answer for most people, and we both know it). I'm active, direct, and honest when something isn't working.

  • Yes. I see patients both in-person and virtually in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Newton, and throughout all of Massachusetts. My Downtown office is easily accessible from the Financial District, Seaport, and Back Bay.

    Many of the lawyers I work with prefer telehealth. It fits more cleanly into a demanding schedule, eliminates the commute, and can be done from a private office between meetings. In my clinical experience, virtual sessions are every bit as effective as in-person work for the conditions I treat most often (depression, anxiety, panic, and burnout). But if you prefer to be in the room, I have in-person availability as well.

  • The professionals who wait until they're in crisis have fewer options and a harder path back. The ones who reach out when they first sense something is off tend to respond faster, recover more fully, and build something they can sustain.

    If you're reading this page, some part of you is already doing the assessment. That's a good instinct. But this isn't a motion you can research indefinitely. I offer consultations for exactly this reason: a conversation between two people (one of whom happens to have practiced law and now practices psychiatry) about what's going on and what might be worth trying.