Bench & Bar March/April 2025

prevalence amongst their patients of a “negative cognitive triad” that reflects “a system of negative beliefs that is characterized by a nega tive view of themselves, their future, and their surrounding world” (https://tinyurl.com/negcogtriad). Those who give up hope in the future may not just be hampering their professional effectiveness. They may also be triggering and exacerbating a depressive disorder that could exact an expanding toll on themselves, their business colleagues, and their personal acquaintances. Hopelessness is such an important clinical feature that over three and a half decades ago renowned psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck devel oped an instrument specifically designed to address this construct. According to its publisher, the Beck Hopelessness Scale “measures negative attitudes about the future.” The way this works is that “patients can either endorse a pessimistic statement or deny an optimistic statement.” Covering a broad age range (17 to 80 years), this assessment tool benefits from research that “supports a positive relationship between BHS scores and measures of depression, sui cidal intent, and ideation” (https://tinyurl.com/bhs-test). “Measures” plural, indeed. It is axiomatic in psychiatry, psychology, and all of the various mental health professions that clinicians do not ascribe diagnoses based solely upon results from a single test. Also, as with every other measure, it is important to consider the individ ual context in which testing occurred. Just as “it ain’t paranoid if it’s true,” a patient’s particular BHS score may reflect unpleasant if transient realities in one’s life, thus amounting to more of a realistic appraisal of one’s current situation than a delusional complex or a free-standing manifestation of a depressive disorder. Just as they look to see how a test matches up with the person taking it during a specific moment in time, those conducting testing also need to be aware of how the measure in question generalizes to the

pool of potential test-takers overall. It won’t surprise the reader to learn that mental health science has a fancy label for this notion as well. Once again, we can turn to Dutch social science researchers— in this instance, Gijs Holleman and colleagues—to help us unpack another dense term of psychological art: “ecological validity.” The underlying concern is that there “have been many critical voices saying that psychology’s laboratory experiments are too limited in scope to study how people function in daily life” (https://tinyurl. com/eco-validity). Hope is a concept that handily reflects the guidance proffered by the “National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being” (the “Task Force”), an entity “conceptualized and initiated by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP), the National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC), and the Association of Professional Responsi bility Lawyers (APRL)” and made up of several other “participating entities” from within and without the American Bar Association (https://tinyurl.com/ntflwb). The Task Force has identified six pillars or “dimensions” that com bine to “make up full well-being for lawyers,” one of which is the “Emotional” dimension, expressed in part by “developing the ability to identify and manage our own emotions” in order to “support mental health,” to “inform decision-making” and to “achieve goals” (https://tinyurl.com/ntflwb-report). Here we see an explicit recognition of the practical utility of psy chological self-maintenance, not just to feel better about who we are and what we do, but also to enable ourselves to make the right choices and win cases. Can we all commit to prizing and promot ing this brand of personal fitness as a pathway to professional success? Let’s hope so.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DR. ERIC Y. DROGIN is a Norton Healthcare Louisville Hospitals Medi cal Staff member with clinical privileges in adult psychology. He teaches on the faculty of the Har vard Medical School, where he serves as the Affiliated Lead of Psycholegal Studies for the Psychiatry, Law, and Society Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and par ticipates in the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and the Forensic Psychiatry Service at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Proud to be a Kentucky lawyer for over 30 years, Dr. Drogin is a former chair of the ABA Science & Technology Law Section and a former president of the American Board of Forensic Psychology. Please contact him at eyd@drogin.net with your suggestions for lawyer mental health and wellness topics.

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