This chapter will discuss the concepts of mental health and wellbeing, assessing how they are perceived within the legal profession. It will discuss the historical evolution of these terms, before considering the ‘wellness turn’ in law (Collier, 2019). It will then consider how elements of the legal profession have begun to acknowledge the growing concerns around wellbeing. This is often characterized in a way which places additional pressures on individual practitioners to self-care. This chapter will draw on the focus group discussions around mental ill-health and how legal practitioners’ experiences of mental ill-health remain heavily stigmatized within the profession, leading to possible loss of career opportunities, promotions or work.

What is mental health and wellbeing?

The concepts of mental health and wellbeing are ubiquitous. However, they are contestable, nebulous concepts which carry with them a heavy burden of historical baggage concerning how we perceive and treat the ‘abnormal mind’. Reference to the term ‘mental health’ can be found in the English language well before the 20th century (Griesinger, 1865), but technical references to mental health were not found as a discrete discipline before 1946. At this time, the WHO and Mental Health Association were founded (Bertolote, 2008). The WHO articulated a definition of mental health in 1950 and has subsequently refined it (Bertolote, 2008). The contemporary definition is not a definition of mental health per se, but of health in a general sense. For example, the WHO Constitution describes health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO, 1946). Therefore, we can see that mental health is clearly connected with wellbeing, encompassing the individual, their functioning and their social context. However, it is not the same as wellbeing. Someone diagnosed as having a mental health condition can have relatively high levels of intrinsic wellbeing (ie people with mental health conditions can live well). At the same time, an individual with low levels of wellbeing may not actually meet criteria for being diagnosed with a mental health condition.