Pre-Retirement Anxiety among Nigerian Public Servants: Counseling Intervention Strategies for Mitigating Effects for Self-Reliance and National Development
Abstract
Despite the established information about retirement, civil servants continue to nurse one form of anxiety or another about the third phase of workers life. Retirement causes a lot of fear among the prospective retiree and other classes of civil servants. It results in anxiety over finances, challenges in managing mental health, not planning for retirement, difficulty on time management, total dependence on present salary, problem of securing residential accommodation, ignorance of what to do with pension money, attitude of friend and family and the challenges of sudden retirement. Studies revealed the major findings showed that pre-retirement anxiety is caused by attitude of government on the payment of gratuity with a mean of 3.3229; Pre-retirement anxiety is caused by fear of reduction in income. It had a mean score of 3.1458 inability of many civil servants to possess a personal accommodation with a mean of 3.0833. As they grow older the level of anxiety increases. Though, the menace of pre-retirement anxiety has eaten deep into the fabrics of our civil servants; however, with effective Counselling intervention programmes, the problems can be tackled through individual or group counselling intervention process which consist of five stages: from initiation to termination stages. Retirement enlightenment units should be set up in all states by the Federal, State and Local Governments to keep civil servants informed on the benefits of planning for retirement from assumption of duty as a civil servant.
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