The Professional Wellness Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, established in 2001 by John V. McShane to help transform the legal profession by promoting improved attorney mental health. PWI works with lawyer assistance programs and medical professionals to help lawyers, judges and law students who struggle with mental health challenges, such as depression, addictions and unhealthy obsessions, regain self-esteem and re-establish themselves as productive legal professionals. Since its inception, PWI volunteers have helped prevent suicides, aided addicts in rehabilitation and helped attorneys with depression and anxiety disorders to find and fund professional help. PWI also works to educate the broader legal community regarding the challenges of mental health in the profession by conducting seminars, sponsoring support groups, and aiding recovering attorneys in proceedings before state bar associations. PWI is committed to raising awareness of the prevalence of mental health challenges and suicide in the legal profession and reduce the stigma, to encourage attorneys to seek the help they may need.
PWI is not a medical provider. PWI is a facilitator and partner for individual lawyers and employers who are serious about addressing the mental health crisis in the profession and within their ranks, while also providing peer support and resources to individuals who struggle with mental health challenges. PWI volunteers are professional peers, whose knowledge and experiences with mental health challenges allow them to connect with others who jeopardize themselves, their families, their clients, their firms and the profession by failing to seek the necessary professional assistance.
FOUNDER / PRESIDENT
JOHN V. MCSHANE
For over 45 years, John has been a passionate activist and advocate for lawyer/law student wellness. After a serious and nearly fatal bout with acute alcoholism in the early to mid-1970’s, John surveyed the landscape of the legal profession and found it was evident that there was an epidemic of alcoholism and drug addiction among his colleagues. In an effort to combat this plague, John initiated and co-founded Dallas Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (“LCL”), is a confidential support group for lawyers impaired by alcohol and/or drugs in January of 1978, which became the prototype for hundreds of LCL groups throughout the United States. These lawyer support groups also led to the formation of Lawyers Assistance Programs (LAPs) in every state in the nation. In his home state of Texas, John was a driving force in the formation of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program (TLAP) in 1990, which has become one of the leading LAP organizations in the country.
As a result of a severe bout of clinical depression, during which he experienced first hand the debilitating nature of depression and at times became acutely suicidal, John realized that LCL groups and LAPs needed to expand the focus on lawyer wellness to include stress management, depression, anxiety, resilience, relationships, process addictions (sex, food, gambling, pornography), in addition to alcohol and drug issues. He found that lawyer depression and anxiety was an even more pernicious problem than lawyer substance abuse and that the suicide rate among lawyers had reached epidemic proportions. In order to address this disturbing trend among lawyers, John founded the Professional Wellness Institute.
Since that time, John has traveled the world promoting efforts to improve attorney mental health before local and state bar associations, law schools, continuing education conferences, law firms and in-house legal departments, including lectures and seminars. PWI also established the Monday Night Group, which is a support group for lawyers suffering from depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder.
John has a passion for legal ethics and professionalism, which led to his leading roles on the Grievance Oversight Committee of the Supreme Court of Texas, State Bar of Texas Professionalism Enhancement Program, and the Dallas district grievance committee of the State Bar of Texas and his drafting and spearheading the adoption of rehabilitation-friendly revisions to the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure, including the Lawyer Disability Provisions.
John’s achievements have been profiled on dozens of radio and television programs, as well as in newspapers, magazines and journals, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Dallas Morning News, and a significant profile in the American Bar Association Journal entitled “The Passionate Practitioner”. His courage and tenacity were profiled in the pilot of the television program “Unstoppable Spirit”.