Post COVID: Rebuilding Health, Hope, and Opportunity By BUDDY STOCKWELL, Executive Director, Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program
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he year of 2020 has truly tested our mettle. It is not often that a disaster affects literally everyone in the world at least to some degree. All of us have suffered consequences from the COVID 19 Pandemic within a spectrum of damages ranging from death of family or friends at worst, to changes in employment, major inconveniences, distractions, isolation, and fears of uncertainty at best. Now, as we get vaccinated and finally begin to emerge from quarantine and the peak of the COVID crisis, there remains a serious level of uncertainty about how badly we have been damaged individually and as a profession. What does the future hold and what will our lives look like going forward?
while in continuous recovery from alcoholism. I have had a stunningly rewarding and interesting life in recovery, and I would not change a thing. I am very grateful to have enjoyed long term remission from a disease that tried its most powerful best to kill me. In addition to surviving alcoholism, I have also survived many hurricanes, going all the way back to Betsy in 1965 and the infamous Camille in 1969. I was nine years old when the eye of Betsy and the brunt of the storm passed over and shook our little house to its foundation in the ink-black night. Of course, everyone knows about Katrina in 2005, which was not the strongest to ever hit, but tested and breached the levee systems in New Orleans killing 81 people and causing well over one billion dollars in damages. The most devastating impact of Katrina: severe mental health damages to those who lost everything they owned, with many shipped off to other cities and forced to start a new life. Incidents of suicide, depression, substance use disorders, and trauma-related disorders overwhelmed mental health resources in Louisiana. It was a perfect storm for an epic mental health crisis.
As for me personally, I’m new to Tennessee. I was hired as the new Executive Director of Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program (TLAP) last year and I moved to Tennessee in July of 2020, during the height of the Pandemic. I came from South Louisiana where I was the Director of Louisiana’s Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program for the last decade (and peer monitor and volunteer there since 1993).
Emotionally, and from a mental health standpoint, the COVID Pandemic feels the same to me, except it is happening on a global scale. Of course, after any storm, we can clear the highways, restore the powerlines, and clean up the debris in our yards. But the mental health damage is much harder to clearly identify, assess, and address because stigma and other barriers often block a person’s ability to admit, much less seek, the mental health help that they need.
Now, halfway into my 39th year of sobriety from alcoholism, my entire legal career (law school at LSU, practicing law in Baton Rouge, and as LAP director in Louisiana and now Tennessee) has been accomplished
As for the legal profession and Lawyers Assistance Programs across the nation, we were all on high alert as the Pandemic took hold in the spring of 2020. As the isolation and fear of being quarantined in an
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