Depressed After 3rd Child's Birth, Successful Partner Committed Suicide
Seemingly very successful both at work and at home, Catherine Bailey returned to work as a finance litigator around Christmas after the birth of her youngest daughter a little over six months earlier.
But the 41-year-old partner in the London office of SJ Berwin apparently may have been suffering from post-partum depression, coroner Alison Thompson told West London Coroner’s Court this week. On Jan. 10, Bailey drowned herself in the River Thames, the London Times reported. The court’s verdict was suicide.
Bailey texted a message to her husband, who is a physician, a short time earlier, telling him she loved him and asking him to take care of their daughters. In addition to the baby, the couple had 5- and 4-year-old girls.
“Ms. Bailey was a very capable and professional woman and a loving mother of three young children who found it hard to meet the demands of motherhood and the high standard she had set herself,” Thompson testified.
Bailey had told her husband she felt under pressure at work, reports the London Evening Standard in an article written shortly after her death.
In the Evening Standard article, the law firm’s managing partner, Ralph Cohen, describes Bailey as an exceptional lawyer who was “hugely popular” with colleagues and clients.
Although the articles don’t discuss what can be done to try to prevent such tragic deaths, subsequent coverage sparked by news of the suicide verdict does.
And many bar associations provide resources to help struggling attorneys and their families:
The American Bar Association has made a continuing legal education program on suicide prevention freely available to the public, notes a post on Findlaw’s Strategist blog. The download can be directly accessed on an ABA Web page for the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs.
A message from ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr. in this month’s issue of the ABA Journal also urges readers to check out the ABA’s Economic Recovery Resources Web portal. It includes information about work/life balance and suicide prevention help, as well as numerous other programs.
Related additional coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Extra Recession Pressure On Women Makes It Harder to Say No”
Legal Week: “SJ Berwin posts near-50% PEP drop as turnover falls by 14%”
Updated on July 29 to provide information about subsequent news coverage on work/life balance sparked by suicide verdict.
