Retirement is Unnatural Posted on September 21, 2006 Charles F. Reynolds III (bio) describes his passion for research and explains why he may never retire.

I graduated from Yale Medical School in 1973 at the tender age of 25. I'm 58 now, I don't know how many years later that is, I guess it's about 33 years later, or there about, life is even more interesting now as a clinical and services researcher in mental health than it was 33 years ago. It just gets better and better and better. I look forward to coming to work 80 percent of the time. Maybe even 90 percent of the time.

A lot of my colleagues who went into practice can only talk about what they're gonna do in retirement. I decided that I may never retire. I think retirement is unnatural anyway, we're meant to hunt and forage until we drop dead, right? So this is a great life and part of what makes it great is that you can work on questions and problems that you care passionately about. You do it right, it makes a difference to the patients that we all care about. That's what is really exciting.

Recently I published a long-term clinical trial in the New England Journal of Medicine. Did I ever think I would publish a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine? No, but I did it, and I was absolutely thrilled with the attention that it got. I enjoyed my 20 minutes of fame, but more than that, more than that, the satisfaction of knowing that these data actually have a chance at changing the way older Americans with depression get cared for. That is satisfying.

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