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Background. Common mental disorder prevalence decreases substantially around the conventional retirement age for men in the UK, but trends for older women are more continuous. Prevalence changes in depression and anxiety around retirement are less clear, as is the role of risk factors. The aim of this study was to establish whether work status, age or other known risk factors account for the reduced prevalence of depressive episode and anxiety disorder around retirement ages for men and for women.Method. The British Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (BPMS) 2000 was analysed, including 1875 men and 2253 women aged 45–75 years. Diagnoses were from the Revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R). Logistic models were adjusted for sociodemographic factors, social network, work status, life events, physical illness and disability.Results. There are marked reductions in the prevalence of depressive episode after 60 years for women [60% lower prevalence, 95% confidence interval (CI) 40–80] and 65 years for men (90% lower prevalence, 95% CI 70–100), compared to the youngest age groups. For anxiety disorder, the reduction in prevalence was 80% (95% CI 60–90) for men and 40% (95% CI 20–60) for women. In fully adjusted multivariate models, the strong association between diagnoses and age groups remained, for both genders. Work status was a significant factor for men but not for women.Conclusion. There is a discontinuity in the prevalence of depressive episode for both men and women, coinciding with statutory retirement ages. No studied risk factor reduced the associations between age group and disorders. This population scale recovery may provide a model for understanding non-genetic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background This study aims to establish the extent of educational differences in the disability transitions of incidence, recovery and mortality in people aged 65 years and over, whether these can be explained by differentials in disease burden and their relative contribution to educational differences in prevalence and disability-free life expectancy (DFLE). Methods A stratified random sample of 13 004 participants in five areas in England and Wales were interviewed in 1991–94 and followed up at 2, 6 (one centre only) and 10 years. Two levels of disability were analysed: mobility difficulty and activities of daily living (ADL) disability. We fitted logistic regression models to model educational differences in disability prevalence, incidence, recovery and mortality transitions. DFLE was calculated to assess the combined effect of the dynamic transitions. Results Those with ≤9 years education had higher ADL and mobility disability prevalence and higher incidence and lower recovery of mobility disability. Differences in disability incidence remained after adjustment for comorbidity. Women with the lowest education had shorter life expectancies (1.7 years less at the age of 65 years) than the most educated and had even shorter DFLE (1.9 years free of ADL disability and 2.8 years free of mobility difficulty at the age of 65 years). Conclusions Differentials in education continue to contribute to prevalence of disability at ages beyond 65 years in both men and women and independently of diseases. These appear to be driven predominantly by differentials in disability incidence that also compound to produce greater differentials in DFLE between education groups than in total years lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]