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For every female suicide in Ireland, there are five male suicides. This book is based on fieldwork done in and around Cork, Ireland between 2008 and 2012 among some forty young lads, aged 18-34. This anthropological approach aims to help explain why some groups in a specific society or community are more prone to commit suicide than others. In addition to suicide, this book focuses extensively on related issues such as alcohol, drug abuse, and other self-destructive behaviors prominent within Irish lad culture. This includes peer pressures and loyalties, chauvinistic jargon, homophobic bullying, humor, and the culture of mocking so as to grasp the cultural expectations of this particular form of masculinity. The everyday workings of gender segregation and gender-appropriateness is examined in detail by informants while addressing the underlying question whether increased gender equalitywhich includes mencould lessen young men's vulnerability to self-destructive behaviors and suicide in Ireland.

This ethnographic account of male suicide in Ireland deals examines the young Irish working class males who are coping with life's stressors in ways that differ significantly from their female peers. Irish suicide statistics and local testimonies indicate how gender specific pain and distress really is and what it means to be male in Ireland today.