Hi, here Gus again.

I hope that you enjoyed our first post in this link , or at least made you curious and encouraged you to continue in this journey to your well being during your retirement time.

Introduction

As we said in our first post, we all embark into our retirement with excitement and high expectations, but for some reason these expectations fall short; we need to understand why is that in order to attack it head-on first.

From the website “Verywellmind”, where we can find trusted information on mental health and developed for 20 , has been written by more than 100 healthcare professionals and industry experts including experienced doctors, therapists, and social workers, and then vetted by board-certified physicians. ), we can see that “For many people, work brings a sense of usefulness and purpose. There is a lifelong desire to be a good provider for one’s family, an achiever and a useful part of society. the person’s sense of self is tied up very strongly in what he or she does for a living; and,with retirement, a sense of loss can occur, leaving a person struggling to understand who they are and what their value is.
Another reason for depression is the fact that that the dynamics at home are
changing. Where one or both spouses may have worked out of the home and been away asignificant portion of the day, now both spouses may be spending more time at home together. Roles may be changing and a greater need for joint decision-making may be occurring. Until a new equilibrium is attained, there may be conflicts as each spouse adjusts to the new situation. Finally, retirement may be seen as a reminder of the fact that the person is aging, with fears about death, sickness, and disability arising.”

What research and studies say

We will go through what some peer-reviewed studies have found out about what is in the retiree´s mind and the impact that retirement has on the general population.

First, let´s see what the Americal Psychological Association says

“The questions most people think about before retirement are “How much money will I need?” and “Am I saving enough?” But while financial security is certainly critical, people need to amass more than money for a successful retirement, experts say. They need to stockpile their emotional reserves, as well.

Too few people consider the psychological adjustments that accompany this life stage, which can include coping with the loss of your career identity, replacing support networks you had through work, spending more time than ever before with your spouse and finding new and engaging ways to stay active. Some retirees ease smoothly into retirement, spending more time with hobbies or family and friends. But others, research finds, experience anxiety, depression and debilitating feelings of loss, says Robert Delamontagne, PhD, author of the 2011
book “The Retiring Mind: How to Make the Psychological Transition to Retirement.”

Research by psychologists and others has found that working or volunteering during retirement can help stave off depression, as well as dementia and hypertension. But other evidence suggests that such activities aren’t the key to everyone’s well-being. Psychologist Jacquelyn B. James, PhD, of the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College, has found that only those people who are truly engaged in their post-retirement activities reap the psychological benefits. That’s why people need to invest as much if not more time in their social or psychological portfolio planning before retirement, to figure out what makes them happy, James says

“Retirement is not like jumping off a diving board, it’s a process and it takes time,” she says. “There’s a lot of work people can be doing leading up to retirement to prepare for it.”

Finding post-retirement opportunities or staying in the workforce as peers retire can be challenging, say psychologists.

“People can be as interested as they want to be, but if the positions aren’t available, or if they don’t have support through the transition, it can be difficult,” says psychologist Joann M. Montepare, PhD, who directs the RoseMary B. Fuss Center for Research on Aging at Lasell College in Newton, Mass.

Whether retirees return to the workforce or not, research indicates they’ll need guidance on how to maintain their well-being throughout their retirement years. A 2012 study in the Journal of Happiness Studies by Elizabeth Mokyr Horner, PhD, of the University of California, Berkeley, found that retirees experience a “sugar rush” of well-being and life satisfaction directly after retirement, followed by a sharp decline in happiness a few years later. In her analysis of cross-sectional data from 16 countries in Western Europe and the United States, Horner found that most retirees experienced the rush-crash pattern regardless of the age they retired. With people living longer, more research is needed on what’s causing the crash and how psychologists can help people prolong the sugar rush, she says.

“People are going to spend more time retired, even if we push the retirement age back. We need to figure out a way to maximize people’s happiness.

In the end, the years leading up to retirement should be a time to increase your self-awareness, adds Delamontagne. He was surprised to find he felt bored and aimless almost immediately after he retired at 63 from a highly competitive job as a software company executive. In talking to other retirees, he found that people with certain personality characteristics — such as being competitive and assertive — had more difficulty adjusting to retirement and were more likely to make impulsive decisions with their time and money, compared with more mild-mannered people coming from low-pressure jobs. “The very attributes that make people successful in their work life often work against them in retirement,” he says.

While there’s no way to prepare for every high and low, retirees will fare better if they familiarize themselves with the emotional challenges well in advance, Delamontagne says. “Once you know that these are the areas that cause problems, you can craft solutions,” he says.

In March 2006, Dhaval Dave, Inas Rashad and Jasmina Spasojevic, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, carried a study “THE EFFECTS OF RETIREMENT ON PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH OUTCOMES”, (© 2006 by Dhaval Dave, Inas Rashad, and Jasmina Spasojevic. All rights reserved), the abstract of this study states:

“While numerous studies have examined how health affects retirement behavior, few have analyzed the impact of retirement on subsequent health outcomes. This study estimates the effects of retirement on health status as measured by indicators of physical and functional limitations, illness conditions,
and depression. The empirics are based on seven longitudinal waves of the Health and Retirement Study, spanning 1992 through 2005. To account for biases due to unobserved selection and endogeneity, panel data methodologies are used. These are augmented by counterfactual and specification checks to gauge the robustness and plausibility of the estimates. Results indicate that complete retirement leads to a 5-16 percent increase in difficulties associated with mobility and daily activities, a 5-6 percent increase in illness conditions, and 6-9 percent decline in mental health, over an average post-retirement period of six years. Models indicate that the effects tend to operate through lifestyle changes including declines in physical activity and social interactions. The adverse health effects are mitigated if the individual is married and has social support, continues to engage in physical activity post-retirement, or continues to work part-time upon retirement. Some evidence also suggests that the adverse effects of retirement on health may be larger in the event of involuntary retirement. With an aging population choosing to retire at earlier ages, both Social Security and Medicare face considerable shortfalls. Eliminating
the embedded incentives in public and private pension plans, which discourage work beyond some point, and enacting policies that prolong the retirement age may be desirable, ceteris paribus. Retiring at a later age may lessen or postpone poor health outcomes for older adults, raise well-being, and reduce the utilization of health care services, particularly acute care.

In 2020, Aviva issued an article titled ¨”Three mental health problems most likely to
affec retirees ….. and how to get help”, it says the following:

“Retirement is a life stage many of us look forward to. Without the pressures of work, thereʼs more time to spend on hobbies, family and friends. But for some, later life isnʼt the joyous time they dreamed of. If stress, anxiety and depression are affecting your life, there are many things you can try that can help.”, furthermore “Half of adults aged 65 and over have experienced common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, according to charity Age UK. Bereavement, divorce, their own ill health or that of their partners or other family members, isolation and financial worries are the most common triggers for mental health problems. These can lead to loneliness and mental distress. Like depression, anxiety is very common in retirees, and people can often suffer from the two problems together.”

As we can see, a joyful life is not guarantee because of retirement, about one third of the retiree population do not face retirement successfully; thus this is the motivationi for this blog, to analyse retirement and more importantly to propose a model whose implementation can allow for retirees to have a meaningful life, minimizing the chances of depression, low self esteem and anxiety. I am not a psychologyst, however I have faced retirement and had my shared of depression, low self esteem and anxiety; fortunately in due time I could see that all was a mental problem, everything was in my mind, triggered by the way we have been raised and our deep rooted self-belief accumulated during our life.

So, for those whose retirement life has not been smooth, please continue with us and we will present to you a map to navigage out of the troubled waters of retirement.

Next Post is Titled: “How to start fixing our situation?”. This post will walk us through people´s motivations. These motivations are related to human needs and their respective desires. We will use a model proposed by the American Psychologist Abraham Maslow, known as “Maslow´´s hierarchy of needs”, in order to explain human behavior. This will be the foundation to come up with a plan of actions to be implemented during our retirement.

This is it for the time being; take care and see you for the next episode, #3: “How can we start understanding what we can do to enjoy fully our retirement” Post #3: What we can do to enjoy fully our retirement