Retirement is not a one size fits all mental health booster. Some people feel lighter, others feel stuck, and a few feel worse after the early glow fades.

A new analysis maps who benefits and who needs help, and it points to income, job demands, and timing as the levers that matter most.

Mental health and retirement

The study was led by Xuefei Li at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.

The team analyzed 1,538 adults across 17 annual survey waves from the Netherlands to track mental health five and a half years before and after retirement.

The Dutch panel is a probability sample of households, which improves confidence that the results represent typical retirees rather than only volunteers.

The researchers separated the retirement transition into phases to see who improves and who dips, instead of treating retirement as a single before and after event.

Measuring mental health

Mental health was measured with an instrument known as the MHI 5, a short five question screen that captures psychological well being, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms.

The team used a piecewise growth curve model, a method that looks for different slopes across segments of time, to capture short term changes at retirement and longer term patterns afterward.

This approach makes it possible to tell whether a quick lift around the retirement year holds, levels off, or reverses. It also shows whether different income groups follow different shapes, not just different average levels.

Income and well-being

Low-income retirees reported the lowest mental health during retirement, even though they improved right after leaving work.

The pattern curved downward about two and a half years in, suggesting a short honeymoon followed by new pressures that show up later.

Middle-income retirees improved more before retirement and then kept rising, but those who had physically demanding jobs started the transition with lower mental health and stayed lower across the process.

High-income retirees showed little change before or after, yet many experienced a clear jump in the retirement year, and those who retired later improved more slowly in that year.

“Understanding these phases sheds light on the adjustment processes that people undergo when faced with the internal and external challenges,” said Li.

Job strain in retirement

Among people with average incomes, holding a more physically demanding job was linked to lower mental health across the retirement period.

Related research has found that leaving a physically heavy job is associated with better self rated health compared with staying on, which helps explain this gap.

Mental job demands did not show a clear link with mental health in the Dutch analysis. That distinction lines up with the idea that chronic physical strain can cast a longer shadow into early retirement.

Timing of retirement effects

A previous review referred to retirement adjustment as a resource based and multi-phase process, not a single step.

This study’s curves fit that picture, with a short boost in the retirement year and, for some groups, a later fade as new realities, routines, and finances settle in.

Among high-income earners, retiring later in life was tied to a slower improvement during the retirement year.

That does not mean late retirement is harmful, only that the short term lift may be smaller when people work longer.

Why this matters for policy

In the Netherlands, the AOW pension age is 67 for most people in 2025, which helps explain why many in the sample retired in their late sixties.

Understanding when dips are most likely allows families and services to time support before problems settle in.

All income groups generally experienced improvements in mental health during the shift to retirement, but there were also phases where declines appeared. These vulnerable periods suggest that targeted support could be especially valuable.

Targeted help could include financial counseling for newly retired low-income adults, peer groups for single women who are retiring with fewer resources, and easier pathways to part time, less physically demanding roles in the years before retirement.

For employers, reducing physical strain in the last working years could pay dividends by protecting mental health into retirement.

For health systems, screening with tools like the MHI 5 can flag risk early so people are not left to struggle alone after the first couple of years.

Limitations of the study

The MHI 5 has good accuracy for identifying people at high risk of mood and anxiety disorders in population studies, so it fits large longitudinal panels.

Piecewise models make room for rapid changes and slow drifts, and the Dutch probability sample strengthens the case that these patterns are not just artifacts of convenience sampling.

Still, the researchers followed people in one country with a specific pension design, and it did not separate voluntary from involuntary retirement.

The study’s limitations point to a clear next step: testing whether similar multi-phase patterns emerge under different pension rules and across groups with varied jobs and resources.

The study is published in the journal SSM – Mental Health.

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