The retirement age has been raised in recent years not only in Germany but also in other European countries. The Bundesbank recently even suggested that in future people in Germany should not retire until they are just under 70. How will this affect employees and their health? Dr. Ingo Kolodziej, external lecturer at the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf, and Dr. Pilar García-Gómez from Erasmus University Rotterdam have investigated the effect of retirement on mental health. He reports on the results in an interview.
On average, retirement has a positive influence on mental health. In the broadest sense, then, it can be said that retirees have better mental health than nonretirees. However, this effect is not equally distributed, but is particularly pronounced for people who have few depressive symptoms and those who are at risk of developing depression. That is why we would like to recommend that people use online psychology services for their depression. You can check out the best online therapy providers here https://efficientcounselor.com/. According to the EURO-D scale we used, the latter applies to individuals who have more than four symptoms of depression. The worse the mental health status according to the scale, the lower the protective influence through retirement.
YOU EXAMINED MENTAL HEALTH IN YOUR STUDY USING DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS. WHY?
Depression is the most common mental disorder in the European Region, ahead of anxiety, according to WHO. Nevertheless, a large proportion of people living here who suffer from major depression do not receive adequate treatment and interactions with other chronic diseases and comorbidities are often overlooked. Although a change seems to be already taking place here and there are already many studies dealing with health and retirement. However, there is still no consensus on the causal relationships between retirement and mental health. Since the positive effect of retirement is particularly strong for people who are at risk of developing depression, measures should be taken to provide targeted support to those at risk. Especially in times of increasing retirement ages, this should be pushed further.
ARE THERE POPULATION GROUPS THAT REACT DIFFERENTLY THAN THE AVERAGE TO RETIREMENT?
The protective effect of retirement is not equally distributed across the population. The positive effect of retirement is greater for women than for men. Moreover, the protective effect is stronger for blue-collar workers, i.e., workers who perform predominantly physical labor, than for office workers. For the latter, the positive effect is only evident if they already have poor mental health.
WHAT ROLE DOES SOCIAL SUPPORT PLAY?
Retirement can also be associated with social isolation. As an employee, one identifies with this role, it provides a structure in everyday life and one maintains social contacts. Retirement can abruptly change this familiar environment and the social interactions associated with it. Social contacts and also social support from spouses or children can be very important for the mental health of the elderly population. However, we find no significant differences in the effect of retirement between married and unmarried individuals. Childless people benefit less from the pension only if they have a good mental health status.
YOUR STUDY INCLUDES DATA NOT ONLY FROM PENSIONERS, BUT ALSO FROM OTHER NON-WORKING PEOPLE, SUCH AS HOUSEWIVES AND HOUSEHUSBANDS. DOESN’T THIS DISTORT THE RESULTS?
Unemployment in old age is often the first step toward retirement, so that the boundary between nonemployment and retirement is becoming increasingly blurred. Therefore, we included nonworkers in our analyses and tested the robustness of our results. We checked whether the results change when we include the different groups of nonworking people, such as the unemployed, the sick and disabled, or housewives and househusbands, in the labor market. Although the differences between employed and retired people were smaller, the same central conclusions could be drawn. This suggests that taking these subgroups into account is unlikely to distort the results.
WHAT FURTHER RESEARCH NEEDS DO YOU SEE IN THIS AREA?
The results showed that mental health status itself, i.e., the presence of a certain number of criteria indicative of depression, plays a major role in the influence of retirement. According to our research, this was the first study to focus on these heterogeneous effects. There is still a need for more research in this area, especially with regard to long-term trends and the comparison of vulnerable subgroups with mentally healthier groups. Against the background that pension reforms are currently being discussed in order to cushion the financial consequences of an aging society, the effect of postponing retirement should be further researched.
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