Where stress presides: predictors and correlates of stress among Australian judges and magistrates

Abstract

Recent research on the nature, prevalence and severity of judicial stress in Australia has revealed a considerable burden of stress placed upon the judicial system. This article builds upon this research by exploring the demographic and workplace factors associated with elevated stress among Australian judicial officers. A survey of 152 judicial officers from 5 Australian courts found that judicial stress – operationalised as non-specific psychological distress, depressive and anxious symptoms, burnout and secondary traumatic stress – was predicted by satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. The only demographic variable found to be reliably associated with judicial stress was jurisdiction: compared with judicial officers in the higher jurisdictions (i.e. judges), those in the summary jurisdictions (i.e. magistrates) reported significantly higher levels of stress and significantly lower levels of basic psychological needs satisfaction. Implications and areas for future research are discussed. Alcohol use and dependence was not associated with levels of stress or needs satisfaction.

Keywords:

• judicial stress
• judicial wellbeing
• secondary traumatic stress
• vicarious trauma
• burnout
• basic psychological needs theory
• autonomy
• relatedness
• occupational stress
• judicial work

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Judicial College of Victoria and Heads of the five participating courts for their support for the research project We also thank the judges and magistrates who participated in the study.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Carly Schrever has declared no conflicts of interest.

Carol Hulbert has declared no conflicts of interest.

Tania Sourdin has declared no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Justice Human Research Ethics Committee and the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee, and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This project was supported by the participating jurisdictions, the Judicial College of Victoria and the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration, and received approval from the Human Recent Ethics Committees for the University of Melbourne (Ethics ID: 1646836) and the participating Courts (JHREC Approval number: CF/16/2871).

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from the Heads of the participating jurisdictions and all individual participants included in the study.

Notes

1 Consistent with the past terminological descriptors referred to by Roach Anleu and Mack (2017), ‘judicial officer’ and ‘judiciary’ are used to refer to any member of the judiciary, regardless of court level or type. Within Australia, the term ‘magistrate’ mainly refers to members of the judiciary who preside in the lower or summary state and territory courts and the term ‘judge’ refers to those who preside in the intermediate and superior courts.

2 The authors are aware of an as yet unpublished study of judges and magistrates in New South Wales, Australia, which directly explores differences in levels of traumatic stress between judges and magistrates and, like the present study, has found that the magistrates reported significantly higher levels of stress than the judges.