Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Key definition

Depression definition

What does Depression mean? In legal and commercial practice, depression describes a prolonged, severe macroeconomic downturn marked by significant falls in output (GDP), prices (deflation/disinflation), employment and credit. It is a descriptive term, not defined in UK or Irish legislation or case law, and has no fixed legal threshold. Practitioners see it used as context in drafting and disputes: material adverse change (MAC/MAE) provisions in M&A and finance; hardship or market disruption clauses; force majeure (pure economic conditions are usually excluded); valuation, rent review and damages; and restructuring/insolvency, where statutory tests concern inability to pay or balance‑sheet insolvency, not the label “depression”. It is not synonymous...

Mental Health and Well-being for Legal Professionals: Understanding Stress, Anxiety and Depression and Their Workplace Impact to Inform Effective Well-being Strategies

Published by a LexisNexis In-house Advisor expert

Practice notes

This Practice Note sets out to clarify what is meant by mental health and well-being, and to unpack terms that are often (mis)used in this context. These include:

stress
anxiety
Depression

Promoting positive well-being depends on recognising the typical challenges that surface at work. The purpose of this Practice Note is to deepen your understanding of how different mental illnesses affect people, so you can identify issues as they emerge and be better equipped to put an effective well-being strategy in place.

The Spectrum of mental health

When we consider physical health, we naturally picture a spectrum: at one end, optimal functioning where we feel fit and healthy; at the other, serious illness, with a range of milder symptoms and conditions in between. What sits at the “positive” end varies from person to person. For example, an Olympic athlete’s view of optimised physical health and capability will differ markedly from that of a typical middle-aged lawyer. We can think of mental health in the same way...

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Richard Martin

Mindful Business Charter

Richard is the CEO of the Mindful Business Charter, a cross business initiative to reduce the stress we experience at work and which is a key cause of workplace mental illness. He is also a principal consultant at workplace consultancy Byrne Dean and is on the IBA Wellbeing Commission. He formerly chaired the steering committee of the Lord Mayor of London’s This is Me campaign which uses story telling to break down the stigma associated with mental illness. He is a qualified coach and mental health first aid instructor. His first career was in law, becoming a senior employment law partner before mental breakdown in 2011 left him in hospital for a month and unable to work for two years. His experience of breakdown and recovery is the subject of his memoir, This Too Will Pass – Anxiety in a...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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