So many Irish parents have given up the traditional, laidback Irish lifestyle in favour of the US workaholic, achievement-oriented approach to life. And so our children are becoming more anxious and suicide rates amongst young men have quadrupled.

In the US children and teenagers are experiencing so much anxiety that the typical child is more anxious than juvenile psychiatric patients were in the 1950s. That's according to two major studies involving thousands of children and university students, whose authors conclude that children are growing up in an "age of anxiety".

Environmental threats and social isolation are the greatest causes of anxiety in children, according to the studies, which appeared in the December issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. As a result, we're likely to see more depression and anxiety-related illness, such as asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease and coronary heart disease, the authors predict.

The study should be a wake-up call for a society that has taken success too far. And while you may think this State is a better place than the US to bring up children, you only have to look at the hype about the Leaving Cert to realise that we're just as bad here.