The quarter-life crisis is very real, says 28-year-old Emma Hussey. "I've lost count of the number of friends who have said to me: 'We knew adolescence would be tricky, but nobody ever said the 20s were going to be this rough'." Hussey believes that increasing materialism and a general feeling of instability are to blame for young people's growing sense of disillusionment.

"Our parents were guided by religion, by the belief that, if you did your best here on earth, you'd get your reward in heaven. But religion doesn't answer our generation's questions about life. You do what you're told by parents and teachers and society, and study for a degree, and then a master's, believing that this will deliver the promised job that will make you feel fulfilled. When a good career doesn't deliver all that you're told, you feel disillusioned. Life isn't panning out the way you were led to believe it would.

"And you wind up sitting in traffic for two hours a day, working in a job that you're not all that passionate about. And baffled. That's where the crisis emerges."

Conscious of this possibility, Hussey rejected her peers' high-earning, fast-living ethos from the start. "I've always worked in jobs where I feel I'm working for something. I couldn't work in a financial institution, for example, or in any job where I was just a cog in an economic wheel. I've seen lots of my friends do that, and it just isn't worth it. There's a lot of stress around to go with the flashy cars and labels. Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing work, but I am saying that happiness doesn't come from material things."

She currently works as a fundraiser for the Irish Cancer Society but, having just completed a Masters in Sociology and Social Policy at UCD, she is leaving shortly to take some time off to travel around South-East Asia with her boyfriend. "Life is about balance," she says. "This is what I want to do now, so that I don't look back later on and regret that I didn't.

"When I come home, I hope to get a job in social work. I believe that each human is their own philosopher and knows what they need to do if they want to find happiness and meaning in their lives. It's something everybody has to do for themselves - otherwise, sooner or later, they're going to run into trouble."