Ageing boomers have everything but the key to happiness

Here are a few headlines from recent classifieds which appeared in a single recent edition of the Washington Post: 'Are you depressed?' 'Irritable? Anxious? Sad?' 'Trouble Sleeping?' 'Moodswings?' 'Not enjoying life?' Strikingly similar editorial banners are seen in the paper's weekly health section pages, as they are in scores of other newspapers and magazines.

America, it seems, is in a collective sulk. Workplace production losses, due to depressed workers, are said to amount to about US$44 billion a year.

According to London-based The Economist, America boasts the world's largest economy. They are among the richest people on Earth. As tourists, they're the world's biggest spenders. While at home, they own the most TVs, telephones, cars, and the most computers too. By all accounts, the yanks also have the most social and political freedoms. So what are they all depressed about?

Mostly, it seems, they're peeved about getting old. Tens of millions of the country's ageing adolescents - known to US sociologists as 'Baby Boomers', those people born between 1946 and 1960 - are now passing through the population like a grey-haired pig in a python.

And as they begin to enter the much-dreaded middle-age, millions are feverishly hoping to fight off father time with mega-doses of vitamins and periodic bouts of plastic surgery.

Refusing to accept the laws of biology the species known as grayus americanus spend endless hours producing puddles of sweat on Stairmasters in swanky million-dollar gyms, and guzzle litres of atrocious tasting (but free-radical reducing) carrot juice. Millions more wishfully read magazine articles with heartening headlines such as '90 isn't what it used to be!' and '50 is the new 30!'