How often do you eat lunch at your desk or skip the meal altogether? If you are a lawyer, the answer might be all the time.
A study from the University of Western Australia has found lawyers and law students are so overworked they are missing meals due to high psychological distress.
Researchers found a fifth of lawyers developed a dangerous eating habit, while half of law students surveyed were not eating properly.
Former lawyer and academic Jerome Doraisamy, who co-authored the report, said working in the legal profession was inherently stressful.
"We found that lawyers and law students across Australia have rates of eating disturbances and disordered eating patterns to rates that are quite concerning," Mr Doraisamy said.
"These preliminary findings are really important for us because it gives us another avenue to look at how to combat this in the legal profession in Australia."
Mr Doraisamy said lawyers were statistically susceptible to personality traits such as perfectionism, pessimism and competitiveness.
"When you balance that against eating, weight and shape concerns, the presumption is that lawyers and law students will be more likely to be concerned about how they're perceived by other people around them."
He said while it was well known lawyers had high levels of stress, it had not been proven how that affected their bodies.
"This seems to be a relatively unexplored area of the mental health conversation [at least in Australia] and we certainly felt that this was one that needed a closer examination."
Stress can trigger a 'perfect storm'
The Butterfly Foundation, who act as a voice for people suffering from eating disorders, has been following the conversation closely.
An eating disorder is a type of mental illness affecting about one in 20 Australians. They have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness.
Butterfly Foundation CEO Christine Morgan said the study was important because of the high levels of stigma against any forms of mental health issues in the workplace.
"Particularly amongst competitive people such as lawyers," she said. "I think stress has a personal impact on people's bodies.
"But one of the most common ways that stress reacts is it affects our appetite."
She said stress played a huge role in what people chose to eat.
"You may be looking for comfort from food, so you have an increase in a desire to eat.
"You may be so tight and knotted in your stomach you cant eat. So it sets up a perfect storm for disordered eating."
'I'm too busy to eat'
Alicia Huppatz, a family lawyer who runs her own law firm in Sydney's north-west, said she believed there were better things to do than eat.
"I don't think about eating, it's not something that I'm concerned about," she said.
"I work in a very highly stressful environment dealing with traumatic material, [and] clients going through very traumatic situations."
Ms Huppatz said most days she would not eat anything until she got home at night, around 8:00pm.
"I will eat dinner, something healthy — meat and two veg — and then after that I'll get into the ice cream and stuff. This is really embarrassing, but that's what happens," she said.
She said her eating habits became worse when she started running her own firm, but the habits started during the early days of her career.
"Back when I started, I was working at a law firm with six other lawyers, I guess I probably learned my behaviour there," she said.
"All day my bosses would go without eating, wouldn't eat anything all day. It's definitely a learned behaviour."
Ms Huppatz said she knew her eating habits were not healthy and that lawyers needed to better look after themselves, but she did not think she had an eating disorder.
