NEW DELHI: For 40-year-old Satendra Singh, senior public prosecutor at a Delhi court, working for continuous 12-14 hours, including standing and arguing in the court for five hours at a stretch, is a daily routine. But adopting this lifestyle has left him in bad health and he is now suffering from high blood pressure and dry eye syndrome.
Singh begins his day by reading through a bunch of files and ends the day preparing for the next day’s cases. This is his standard routine for all working days. At present, however, he is undergoing treatment at a hospital and is under heavy medications for lifetime.
“We have to study and prepare ourselves for all the queries raised by the court during the hearing. For citing case laws and judgments, we have to look into law journals which require a lot of time and concentration. We get no time for workout or walks,” Singh said.
Singh’s isn’t an isolated case. A study by a group of researchers from Delhi’s Maulana Azad Medical College, conducted early this month, has revealed that tremendous work pressure on lawyers is leading them to bad health. Forty-six per cent of the 300 lawyers in the age group of 30-50 on whom the survey was conducted are suffering from stress disorders and 36 per cent of them are hypertensive.
The study attributes reasons for these disorders among young lawyers to no fixed work schedules and long working hours. The research conducted in six district courts—Dwarka, Patiala House, Tis Hazari, Karkardooma, Rohini, Saket has revealed that both the private as well as government lawyers are in the grip of high stress disorders.
Advocate B S Chaturvedi who does private practice in Patiala House Courts said, “Our work schedule makes us vulnerable to lifestyle diseases that we probably wouldn’t have got had we been in any other profession.” He spends as many as 16 hours a day working from his house as well as wandering from one court to another.
The study has found that criminal lawyers experience more stress than other lawyers— perhaps because of the responsibilities of human life involved in their specialisation. “The nature of work, responsibilities, number of intricacies and more than all, lives of individuals are at stake in criminal cases. With the involvement of the police and other administrative officials increases the degree of pressure. It ultimately results in stress,” the study states. The researchers have found that of all the professionals, lawyers are the most prone to stress, depression and alcohol problems.
When lawyers talk of stress, they talk of constant pressure, office problems, dealing with difficult clients, exhaustion and loss of control while preparing and trying cases, bailable hours, client expectations and above all, the responsibility of saving the lives of innocent persons.
Delhi-based psychiatrist Dr R K Kapoor said, “I get 8-10 patients every day who suffer from stress issues. With the growing demand of work pressure and performance, people end up developing psychiatric issues. One in 10 patients I see is either a lawyer or person belonging to law enforcement agencies, and all of them have a common issue of stress because of bad lifestyle.”
Kapoor recommends them short vacations around the year and time spent with families. This, he says, is the best medicine to keep work-stress away. The study has been sent to various bar associations asking them to arrange regular health camps on court premises so that the health of the lawyers can be monitored on equal intervals of time.