11/18/2025
💥NEW PUBLICATION ALERT💥
Absolutely thrilled to share that my first-author paper is published in Social Science & Medicine, exploring how ⚖️ criminal-attorney stress, secondary trauma, and legal-culture norms shape attitudes and responses to substance use (SU).
Our findings highlight that:
⚖️ Courts and other elements of the criminal legal system are overwhelmed with enormous caseloads involving people struggling with drugs and alcohol.
💔 This is the first study to illuminate how SU stigma operates within the criminal legal system—both toward defendants with SU-related challenges and toward attorneys managing their own SU–related distress—revealing critical implications for justice, wellness, and legal culture.
💼 Criminal attorneys—both prosecutors and defense counsel— often face a toxic mix of stress, burnout, and secondary trauma.
🍷 Legal culture discourages help-seeking while paradoxically normalizing unhealthy coping through alcohol and other SU.
📚 Participants emphasized that increased training, better resources for SU–related cases, and behavioral health reforms to law-school curricula would meaningfully address many of the occupational stressors that attorneys face and improve their ability to manage substance-related issues in practice.
🏛️ System managers and professional legal organizations must take a more active role in supporting attorneys' wellbeing and aligning societal responses to SU with public health principles.
💬 I would be remiss not to highlight the essential contribution of individuals with lived experience in informing SUD research. 💫 Having navigated these systems ourselves, we hold insights that are vital to identifying gaps and guiding effective solutions—and to reshaping how systems respond.
📄 Citation:
Ge**er, G. E., Bazzi , A. R., Beletsky, L., Pitpitan, E. V., Reed, M. B., & Smith, L. R. (2025). Occupational stress and substance use-related stigma among criminal attorneys. Social Science & Medicine (1982), 118757, 118757.
