Having purpose in life also fulfills some biological needs, helping to keep your brain and immune system healthy. Retirement may not have to be all-or-nothing. Many people find that it can help to gradually transition into full-time retirement rather than jump right in. If your job allows, you could take a sabbatical or extended vacation to recharge your batteries and see how you deal with the slower pace of life.
Find part-time work after retirement. Another way to make retirement more of a gradual transition is to incrementally reduce the hours you work in your existing job, switch to a part-time job, or work for yourself in some capacity.
As well as providing purpose, part-time employment can also supplement your income, keep you socially engaged, and ease the adjustment to retirement without you having to endure the demands of full-time work. Volunteering can help expand your social network, boost your self-worth, and improve your health.
Nurture hobbies and interests. Whether your interests lay in traveling, nature, sports, or the arts, for example, try enrolling in a club, joining a team, or taking a class. Learn something new. Whether you want to learn to play a musical instrument, speak a second language, or complete a degree or high school diploma, adult education classes are a great way to expand your mind, develop new interests, and set fresh goals for yourself.
Get a pet. Pets—especially dogs and cats—also provide companionship as you age, can help boost your mood, ease stress, depression, and anxiety, and improve your heart health. While workplace stress can take a serious toll on your health, especially if you lack job satisfaction, damaging stressors can also follow you into retirement. The loss of identity, routine, and goals can impact your sense of self-worth, leave you feeling rudderless, or even lead to depression.
Adopt a relaxation practice. Regularly practicing a relaxation technique such as meditation , progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, yoga, or tai chi can help ease anxiety and stress, lower your blood pressure , and improve your overall sense of well-being. Get active. Physical exercise is a very effective way to boost your mood, relieve tension and stress, and help you feel more relaxed and positive as you get older. No matter your age or limitations in mobility , there are still ways for you to reap the benefits of regular exercise.
Aim for 30 minutes of activity on most days. Practice gratitude. Spend time in nature. Spending time in green spaces can relieve stress, put a smile on your face, and deepen your sense of well-being. Try hiking, fishing, camping, or walking in a park, along a beach, or through woods. Break the worry habit. Chronic worrying is a mental habit that you can learn how to break. But experts are agreed that being active is good for you on many levels. Age UK runs a programme called Fit as a Fiddle, which encourages older people to keep physically active - as well as to eat healthily and look after their mental health.
Simply walking can offer great benefits, including boosting your mood, as can gentle exercise classes. However, the IEA - along with the Age Endeavour Fellowship which co-authored the report - says one answer would be to allow people to keep on working for longer, in order to help people live healthier lives.
And being old means that lifestyle choices catch up with you. A lifetime of smoking, a poor diet or drinking too much alcohol will all have had an effect. They can result in cardiovascular problems, respiratory disorders like COPD chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or complications of type 2 diabetes which can all affect a person's ability to be as active as they would like.
Cancer is also predominantly a disease of old age. Three out of five cancers occur in people aged 65 and over, while more than a third are diagnosed in the overs. Ensuring the health and wellbeing of older people will become increasingly important as this demographic group will account for a greater proportion of the population, while the resources to support them decrease [ 2 ]. Retirement represents a major life transition affecting older adults [ 3 ]. In Australia, it is projected that one in four individuals will be at the nominal retirement age of 65 or over by [ 4 ].
This effect is expected to be especially pronounced in regional and remote areas [ 5 ]; consequently, understanding the key associations between retirement and health and wellbeing in these locations is likely to be increasingly important, given the relative absence of existing research. Current evidence regarding the effects of retirement on wellbeing lacks consensus, with a recent systematic review of twenty-two longitudinal studies on retirement and health reporting contradictory evidence across studies [ 6 ].
The authors concluded that further longitudinal research in this area is needed, particularly studies considering the contextual factors surrounding retirement, as this was noted to be lacking. These transition phases also need to be evaluated within the context of other key influences, such as chronic disease, recent adverse life events, and periods of unemployment, which have all been shown to impact on or be associated with physical, social, and emotional wellbeing [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ], as have a range of other psychosocial factors [ 14 , 15 ].
Early retirement may also be influenced by different factors to those associated with leaving the workforce at 65, and contribute to role uncertainty related psychological discomfort, at least in the medium term [ 16 ]. The relatively pervasive and reciprocal effects of unemployment on mental health are well known [ 17 , 18 , 19 ], but less is known about the health effects of other employment-related factors, such as the negative impact of job insecurity [ 20 ] or the positive impact of favourable psychosocial work conditions [ 21 , 22 , 23 ].
On the other hand, the observed positive effects associated with exiting from the workforce appear to be more marked among higher socio-economic groups [ 23 ].
In Australia, perhaps one of the most salient contextual factors is geographical location. Rural work, especially in certain industries such as farming, is often inter-generational and involves significant ties to the local community. Likewise, compared with major cities, rural areas have a greater proportion of residents aged over 65 [ 26 ].
The meaning of retirement itself among such diverse groups is worthy of exploration, together with changing societal attitudes and expectations. Moreover, cessation of an employment role can entail a significant impact on personal identity, as well as finances, property and housing, sense of purpose and belonging in the local community [ 25 ], and potentially initiates a major change in lifestyle. Compounding this, evidence suggests that rural residents are less likely to retire voluntarily, with forced retirement due to illness or injury being significantly more common than in urban areas [ 27 ].
Not only does this often necessitate a greater reliance on health and social support, it in turn is also associated with further negative outcomes, including poorer self-reported physical and mental health [ 28 ]. Considering the diverse contextual factors which may affect employment and retirement within rural areas, and the different domains of wellbeing in the post-retirement phase, the current analysis aims to build on previous research by exploring the effects of employment and retirement amongst a longitudinal cohort of rural Australians.
Those who were lost to follow-up over the course of the study were younger and of a lower perceived financial position than those who completed all phases; no other baseline demographic or psychosocial characteristics were associated significantly with study attrition [ 10 ].
A broad range of socio-demographic, psychosocial, health and service use measures were utilised across the four ARMHS phases, including several standardised self-report instruments [ 29 , 30 ]. Within the ARMHS data sets, increased remoteness has been shown to impact negatively on perceived personal and community drought-related stress [ 32 ]; however, relationships between hardship experiences and psychological distress also appear to be weaker in more remote locations [ 33 ].
Self-reported demographic information was obtained at each phase, including sex, date of birth, marital status, and whether they were living on a farm. Recent personal adverse life events were measured at each study phase using the item List of Threatening Experiences [ 34 ]. In the current analyses, three recent life events items were excluded relating to unemployment, downgrading at work, and major financial crises because these factors were already assessed by other measures. The retained events covered: illness and deaths among relatives and friends ; arguments within and outside of the household ; serious accidents; court cases; and other adverse events.
Previous ARMHS papers have examined associations between chronic disease status and wellbeing among older rural residents [ 11 ], quality of life [ 7 ], and lifetime affective and alcohol use disorder [ 35 ].
As this analysis strategy differs somewhat from conventional analyses of longitudinal data i. By-and-large, our data set did not facilitate a prospective evaluation of employment transitions during the actual study period , with the vast majority of participants However, there were sufficient numbers of participants who experienced a single transition during the study period i.
Aggregate differences between study phases and a targeted subset of interactions were also examined in the GEE analyses.
It should also be noted that our primary interest was in assessing the significance or otherwise of individual predictors and examining their profiles across the chosen global outcome domains , and not in the identification or testing of potential aggregate prediction equations or the modelling of inter-relationships between the outcomes; with the latter being a more appropriate course of action if we had comprehensive, independent measures of those outcomes, as opposed to a set of global self-reported perceptions.
On the other hand, as most of the outcome measures were rated on comparable 1 to 5 scales, the raw score regression weights reported here are relatively easy to interpret and compare. A cross-sectional sub-analysis of self-reported reasons for retirement was also conducted based on respondents to the 5-year follow-up survey who were already retired, or planned to retire within the next 5 years.
At baseline, participants met inclusion criteria for the current analyses i. Over the four survey phases, there were a total of responses, with participants completing an average of 2. There were small but statistically significant correlations ranging from 0. Participant characteristics are shown in Table 1 by data source since different subsets of data were used in the various analyses. The majority Consequently, only There was a clear age progression across the retained groups, reflective of their delineation.
Other socio-demographic differences between the retained groups were in the expected directions see Supplementary Table S 1 ; for example, participants who were employed at all phases were more likely to live on a farm As shown in Table 1 , the average age of the sample also rose by 4. Table 2 summarises the GEE analyses for the prediction of physical health, everyday functioning, and financial position. There was no significant difference between participants who were employed at all study phases and those retired at all study phases, or between those who were employed at all study phases and those who transitioned from employment to retirement during the study, with one exception.
Participants who transitioned from employment to retirement during the study rated significantly higher on their overall perceived financial wellbeing than participants who remained in the workforce for the entire study period with means of 3. Among the other factors that were controlled for in the GEE analyses, several significant effects were observed, which were largely congruent with expectations based broadly on the psychosocial determinants research literature.
A greater number of recent adverse events was associated with poorer outcomes for all three measures, while chronic disease was associated with poorer physical health and everyday functioning.
Being currently married was associated with improved everyday functioning and financial position, while greater remoteness was associated with poorer physical health and financial position.
Occupation was also significantly associated with financial position, with professionals scoring higher on this outcome than managers the reference category , and machinery operators, labourers, and those reporting mixed occupations scoring lower. Physical health also tended to be rated higher at baseline, which is consistent with the changing rates of chronic disease noted earlier. Similarly, overall functioning was rated marginally lower at the 5-year follow-up. As detailed in Table 3 , for the outcomes of mental health, satisfaction with relationships, and satisfaction with life, retired participants rated significantly more positively than those who were in the workforce, while those who were not in the workforce at all phases had significantly lower scores than employed participants on each of these measures e.
There were no significant differences between employed participants and those who transitioned to retirement either from employment, or from not being in the workforce. The relative benefits for retired participants were similar across the three outcomes. Indeed, within those who were not in the workforce for all phases, perceived relationships clearly received the highest mean ratings 3.
Being currently married and having fewer adverse life events were both associated with higher scores on all three outcomes, while females scored slightly higher on their relationships, and those with any chronic disease reported poorer mental health. There was also a modest tendency for mental health and relationships to receive higher ratings at baseline, but this effect was inconsistent, with minimal differences at the 3-year follow-up.
As detailed in Table 4 , the sub-analysis of self-reported reasons for retirement comprised respondents to the 5-year follow-up survey, categorised by their retirement timeframe.
Participants who retired more than 5 years before the study tended to report a younger retirement age, particularly female respondents Overall, the most frequently given reason There were some notable differences between the reasons for retirement reported by those who had already retired either prior to the study, or during the study phase and the proposed reasons for retirement among those who planned to retire in the next 5 years.
Eligibility for superannuation or being financially secure was listed as a proposed reason for retirement by almost half Similarly, lifestyle reasons and a declining interest in work were listed as proposed reasons for retirement by one-third Participants who had actually retired were also significantly more likely to report that this was due to their own sickness, injury, or disability than those who were yet to retire In addition, we compared self-reported reasons for retirement provided by male and female respondents.
Overall, males were more likely than females to list eligibility for superannuation or being financially secure as a reason for retirement While males were also more likely to list their own sickness, injury, or disability as a reason for retirement The progression across categories noted in Table 4 for a declining interest in work was more evident among female respondents 2.
In contrast, two reasons for retirement were clearly less likely to be listed by male respondents, retirement of partner 1. Moreover, there were only 4 of male respondents who identified retirement of partner as one of their main reasons for retirement, 3 of whom were in the yet to retire subgroup. Among participants included in the reasons for retirement analyses, there were 64 respondents The aim of this paper was to explore the health and wellbeing of rural and remote Australians across various employment and retirement categories, whilst accounting for other psychosocial determinants.
Across all six self-reported outcomes, respondents who were not in the workforce rated significantly more poorly than those who were employed, with mean scores also indicating that they rated more poorly than retired participants on each outcome. Recent longitudinal studies using large representative samples have similarly demonstrated that employed individuals have better self-rated health than unemployed people [ 38 ] and that most people sustain their pre-retirement self-rated health levels during the initial post-retirement years [ 39 ].
The important role of enduring and stable social supports e. Many studies are also limited by only including men or few women. Furthermore, as proposed by Ekerdt , retired life may be experienced less as an arrival but more as a personal frontier. A general observation related to psychological adaptation following retirement, is that retrospective reports tend to be more positive compared with actual pre-post ratings of health and well-being, which is a strong argument for a longitudinal design Wells et al.
This highlights the need to gather detailed pre-retirement information for an improved understanding of the retirement transition. Another challenge deals with how to conceptualize change.
A temporal perspective has been called for Shultz and Wang, , which allows researchers to characterize each individual transition and examine within-person change and fluctuations on a finer scale. Previous studies have typically used data with bi-annual e. Studies that have included more frequent than bi-annual measurements are typically small, non-population based, and case-studies Reitzes et al.
The design, structure, and content of existing studies provide a less than optimal platform for studying the complex and rapidly changing patterns of within-person change and associations of change in different variables linked to psychological health. Thus, designs with more frequent and repeated measurements are needed. Moreover, in most existing research on retirement, data is reported from studies e. A third challenge concerns the targeted domains of psychological health.
Most previous studies have used data from: a large population-based studies originally designed for other research purposes than retirement; or b studies designed for retirement research, but with a heavy emphasis on other domains than psychological health; or a combination of a and b. As a consequence, psychological health is typically measured only by single-item measures or through one concept e. For example, the large and population-based German Socio-economic panel with annual measurements only includes a single-item measure of life-satisfaction Pinquart and Schindler, ; Wetzel et al.
As the retirement transition may have different effects on different dimensions of psychological health, a study should ideally include a variety of theoretically driven, multiple item-based, measures of psychological health.
A firm consolidation and validation of findings across studies require comparisons of outcome measures in the same study Wang et al. Finally, an important challenge for retirement researchers is how to define the concept of retirement status, and how to best measure it.
While this may seem quite straightforward, it is by no means a simple task as retirement includes many different facets, can carry different meanings between individuals, and can thus be measured in different ways Denton and Spencer, For instance, retirement is no longer viewed as a one-step permanent career exit Wang and Shultz, ; Zhan and Wang, It is therefore important to be able to distinguish between different types of retirement statuses and transitions when studying its influence on various psychological outcomes.
Retirement may look very differently, and be perceived very differently, for different individuals, and the definition can be very arbitrary Beehr and Bowling, ; Cahill et al.
In the end, the appropriate definition of retirement, and the answer to the question of how to best measure it, likely depends on the research question. The launch of the HEARTS study constitutes an attempt to adhere to such a call, potentially bridging some of the present gaps in the literature on psychological health in the retirement transition.
The overall aim of HEARTS is to study psychological health in the years before and following retirement with a focus on continuity and change over the transition. The main research questions of the HEARTS study are: How does the retirement transition affect psychological health in the early phases of the third age?
What contributes to continuity and changes in psychological health after retirement? Which factors moderate and mediate the effect of retirement on psychological health? The HEARTS study is a longitudinal cohort study, following individuals annually before, during, and after the retirement event. The second follow-up third wave is ongoing in spring The study is scheduled to provide annual follow-up data until at least the year , resulting in five measurement occasions waves of within-person data.
A crucial assumption in the HEARTS design is that the retirement process cannot be properly characterized in terms of universal trends and statistical main effects. Instead, the retirement process is proposed to be constituted of multiple interaction effects in which different variables moderate the effect of retirement on psychological health. Following this line of reasoning, the empirical model of the HEARTS study see Figure 1 , highlights the role of potential moderating factors, such as gender, socioeconomic status, reason for retirement, job-satisfaction and engagement, self-perceptions and perceptions of aging, attitudes related to retirement, and physical fitness.
Moreover, mediating variables are also included in the empirical model, guiding us to study the underlying mechanisms of change in psychological health across retirement. Key mediating variables in the model are overall lifestyle and activity patterns, including engagement in physical, cognitive, and social activities. The empirical model of the HEARTS study, showing possible moderators and mediators of the effects of retirement on psychological health.
TABLE 1. In addition to the questionnaire, cognitive tests were included in the web-based survey. Different domains of cognitive performance were assessed. In both waves, memory was assessed with the original Thurstone picture memory test Thurstone and Thurstone, Twenty pictures were subsequently presented to the participants, each one for 5 s.
Then, participants were asked to identify each of the 20 previously viewed pictures when shown together with three other related, but not previously shown, pictures. In wave 1, verbal abilities were assessed using 20 questions on word knowledge, and numeracy was assessed using 12 questions. There was a 40 s time limit for each answer. In wave 2, logical reasoning was measured by 12 diagrammatic puzzles, each with a missing part that the participant attempted to identify from eight options Arthur and Day, Participants had 3 min to find all correct answers.
Spatial ability was assessed in wave 2 using a test of spatial rotation Peters and Battista, The mental rotation test requires participants to view two polygons, and judge if they are planar rotations of each other as opposed to its mirror image.
Data from the HEARTS cohort will be linked to Swedish national registers containing information on mortality, disease and sociodemographic information as well as life-course information, such as cognitive status and fitness at 18 years of age for men using the Swedish conscription data base.
Our intention is to later integrate the HEARTS cohort into other ongoing Swedish longitudinal studies, creating opportunities to have more measurement points and more extended longitudinal within-person information.
A nationally representative population-based sample of 14, individuals between the ages 60 and 66 was recruited in April through the register, Statens personadressregister SPAR in April SPAR includes all persons registered as residents in Sweden and the register is updated each day with data from the Swedish Population Register.
The sample was stratified by age, but no other restrictions were made. Invitations for participation in the study were sent out to 14, individuals. In addition to general information about the study, the invitation letter also included information on how to take part in the study through a web-based survey, administered through the Qualtrics service web-link, individual study code and password. Non-responders received a first reminder 3 weeks later with the same information on how to answer via the web-based survey.
Three weeks later a second and final reminder was sent out together with a paper-version of the survey in addition to information that the web-link was still valid.
The rationale for using a computer-based platform for annual surveys is based on the knowledge of wide internet access and computer use in Sweden, including among older adults Findahl, However, those who prefer a paper-based questionnaire are offered this option throughout the study.
Cognitive tests were only included in the web-based survey and represent different aspects of cognitive function. We did not include reaction-time based measures, because different electronic devices and differences in internet connection speed could distort the results.
The selected tests could be performed on all devices. These tests were not intended to be diagnostic, but as indicators of cognitive performance in different domains. The HEARTS study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the regional ethical approval board of the University of Gothenburg with written informed consent from all subjects.
All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethical approval was granted from the ethical approval board of the University of Gothenburg Dnr: In addition to describing the theoretical rationale and background of the HEARTS study, in the present paper we present some empirical highlights of the two first waves of the study. These include findings concerning a cross-sectional differences in psychological health between individuals with different retirement status working, partially retired or fully retired at baseline, and b changes in psychological health across 1 year for different retirement status groups working both waves, retired both waves, and retiring between waves.
For the analyses presented in the present paper, we selected four variables representing psychological health as outcome variables: stress, depression, quality of life, and autonomy.
This scale includes 10 items. Participants reported how often they experienced different feelings in the last week, using a 5-point Likert-type scale. The CASP includes 12 items targeting autonomy, pleasure, control, and self-realization, using a 4 point Likert-type scale. Three items assessed autonomy on a 5-point Likert-type scale. In the first step, we conducted descriptive analyses to describe the HEARTS sample at baseline wave 1 and first follow-up wave 2 a year later.
For the main analyses, we compared the four retirement groups described in the Measures section in measurements of depression, stress, autonomy and quality of life, using ANOVAs, followed by Games-Howell post hoc tests, in SPSS. Secondly, we compared change between wave 1 and 2 in these variables, between those who were retired in both waves still retired , those who retired between waves retirees , and those who stayed working between waves still working , using repeated-measure ANOVAs.
In total 5, persons completed the first wave survey, resulting in a response rate of Among the participants, 4, The cohort consists of slightly more women The majority reported being married or having a partner In terms of education, the cohort is better educated compared to the general population, with the largest group In total, TABLE 2. In terms of retirement status, the majority of the sample Of the remaining individuals, 7.
Of those who reported not being retired, Information on work status was missing for 41 participants. In the first annual follow-up in the second wave measurement , 4, individuals completed the survey again, representing Among those, 3,
0コメント