Mental Health and Awareness Committee

Hello. My name is Tim Daley and I'm a judge of the Family Court in Nova Scotia. I've been asked to make this video as an introduction to this email about mental health and young lawyers.

My interest in this issue began long ago when I suffered a mental health crisis as a young lawyer. When I became president of the Nova Scotia Barristers Society in 2012 I decided to share my personal story as well as the information I have learned about the risks of mental health problems within the legal profession.

You've just begun your career and I want you to have a long, productive and joyful career.  But part of that will be to learn about the particular risks to lawyers for mental health problems. They are disproportionate. Lawyers suffer from depression, anxiety and mental health issues at a far greater rate than most people in Canada. Now understanding this, why it happens, the risks and how to manage them is part of developing a strong and productive, joyful and happy career and that's what I hope for you. But in order to do that it's important to begin to talk about these issues, to learn about them and to understand how to manage that risk over the many years to come both for you and your professional colleagues.

So I'd like you to take a few minutes to read the emails that are attached; the stories, the letters including mine where I share more information about what happened to me and what I learned about that experience over time.

I think you'll find it to be helpful to you and I would encourage you because of this to begin a conversation with your colleagues, your family, with us, and anyone else who wants to learn about this so that we can address the issue of mental health for young lawyers and help you have that career that you so richly deserve.

Thanks for listening.