Anxiety and depression among law students: Current knowledge and future directions

Increased psychology-law collaboration has yielded great strides over the p ast 20 years. However one area of research that remains overlooked involves the psychological well-being of law students. The purpose of this article is to review and evaluate the existing literature on anxiety and depression among law students. This literature suggests that self-reports of anxiety and depression are significantly higher among law students than among eithe r the general population or medical students. Recommendations for advancing knowledge in this area include developing hypothesis-driven research, usin g measures that adequately discriminate between anxiety and depression, and testing alternative hypotheses regarding the origins of law student distre ss.