ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the process involved in developing a positive, educative, preventative approach to enable students to develop an understanding of stress and the impacts of stress on their body, mind and emotions, and to equip themselves with a range of techniques to facilitate and support sustained optimal performance in their personal and professional lives. Vitality for Life and Law is an innovative, preventative programme developed in response to the growing awareness of the high levels of psychological distress experienced by law students and legal professionals. With the need to integrate measures to combat mental distress in law students in the curriculum empirically well established, it is worthwhile then considering how law schools can effectively provide ongoing monitoring, and encourage self-monitoring, of students. Individual, face-to-face meetings, although absolutely necessary and appropriate in some cases, are not an efficient model from the perspective of law schools, due to the resource-intensive requirements of such a model, or the time-poor students.
