ABA Journal, Mental Health Law Becomes This Law Prof and Author’s Focus After Walking ‘Through the Fire’:
The most dangerous moments of Fredrick Vars’ life guided his career path.
The first came in fall 2004, when he was a third-year associate at a law firm then known as Miller Shakman & Beem in Chicago.
Just days after he’d won his first jury trial representing a union member suing the union for retaliation, he experienced his first psychotic episode. Though he had dealt with depression much of his life, he’d later be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
It’s a day that he barely remembers. His delusional behavior was so concerning that his wife called 911 for an ambulance.
“But who shows up? A police officer in uniform with a gun at the front door,” says Vars, the author of Through the Fire: How People with Mental Illness are Empowering Each Other. “I was so delusional. I don’t think I was nearly as afraid as I should have been in that situation.”
Vars, a Yale Law School graduate with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, recently had started a new medication.
“That, combined with stress at work, was the trigger for the manic episode,” he says.
He voluntarily committed to a Chicago psychiatric hospital, signing a paper that placed him in a locked psychiatric unit, a move that he’d later question as legal. …
After he was discharged and at home, he entered a deep depression, fighting suicidal ideation as he worked his way back.
“We lived in an apartment on the 12th floor, and I was afraid to go near the windows. I was afraid to go in the kitchen because there were knives. I just didn’t trust myself,” he says.
He healed and went back to work, but in spring 2006, the second defining moment came. Facing stress and handling another medication change, he had another manic episode followed by another hospital stay.
With the help of lithium, he stabilized and realized that he needed a career change. … He was hired at the University of Alabama School of Law as an associate law professor in 2008. With help from medication and self-care, he says, he received tenure.
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