COLLEGE PLANNING | ESTATE PLANNING | INSURANCE | INVESTING | PORTFOLIO SPOTLIGHT | REAL ESTATE | RETIREMENT | TAX PLANNING
When Client Depression Becomes Your Business
Retirees often succumb to depression. When and how can a financial advisor get involved? By Ben Mattlin
WHEN IT COMES TO RETIREMENT PLANNING, advisors are adept at financial matters such as how to generate lasting income and exercise spending discipline. But their retiree clients are likely struggling emotionally, too, in ways that asset allocations and Monte Carlo simulations never come close to addressing.
Advisors are not psychotherapists, of course, but they are often in good positions to pick up on signs that their clients are deeply unhappy, anxious or even depressed. And if advisors miss those signals, their clients’ feelings can upend even the best laid retirement plans.
And the number of people facing this possible postretirement depression is huge: More than 11,000 Americans turn 65 every day, estimates say; by 2030, one in five will be retirement age.
“ I often say that 95 % of my job is psychology and 5 % is investing,” says Brett Bernstein, CEO of XML Financial Group in Bethesda, Md.
As a trusted advisor, you can build deep relationships with your clients, he continues, and that can give you a window into their feelings about leaving the workforce. You shouldn’ t wait for trouble to arrive and for emotional issues to grow to the point they’ re impossible to ignore, he says. By addressing potentially uncomfortable topics beforehand— listening carefully to clients’ concerns, exhibiting empathy and proactively educating them about what to expect in retirement, beyond the loss of a paycheck— you can help them better prepare for the emotional adjustment.
The six months immediately before and after retirement can be critical, he stresses, and getting clients emotionally ready for that pivotal 12-month window is invaluable.“ It never hurts to recommend they speak to a professional mental health expert if they feel that would be of benefit.”
It isn’ t an unusual problem. A 2020 report in the journal Healthcare found that nearly a third of retirees surveyed experience depression. It can be more widespread among people who were pushed into early retirement by illness or layoffs. The effects
52 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | MARCH / APRIL 2026 WWW. FA-MAG. COM