Okehampton community interest company Immersion in the Community will be running a regular men’s gaming session from May to help tackle men’s mental health problems.

The new group will be open to any man over the age of 18 and take place on Friday evenings from 6-8pm at Immersion, Okehampton’s virtual reality centre on Fore Street, where attendees will have access to all the arcade’s gaming equipment including the virtual reality headsets.

The aim, said owner Ryan Arthurs, is to provide men with a safe space to play games, socialise with other men and open up about any emotional problems which they may otherwise feel unable to discuss.

He added: ‘Virtual reality can help with mental health. Through the virtual reality headsets we can get people experiencing different things. It helps people get away even if it’s for five or ten minutes.’

This new group will be the second of two new initiatives to help combat men’s mental health problems in the Okehampton area as Okehampton Community Garden formed a new men’s mental health support group in March following news that six local men had committed suicide over the course of last year.

Awareness of mental health problems has steadily grown over the past few years with local children’s mental health charity Tor Support Services reporting a substantial rise in the number of primary school children referred to the service. Meanwhile, the North Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team (NDSART) recently announced that half of all callouts were to help people in ‘extreme mental distress’.

At the Okehampton Hamlets Parish Council annual parish assembly, Chris Clark from NDSART, said: ‘Half of our work is searching for missing people in distress and we have a robust support team because sometimes [these call-outs] don’t always end well.’

Last month NDSART member Jenny Doe announced she had organised the Through the Darkness fundraising run across Dartmoor to raise awareness of mental health and the increasing number of callouts to those in mental distress.

Research carried out by mental health charity Mind in 2009 revealed that men were considerably less likely than women to seek support when they were worried or depressed. In 2019, Mind commissioned new research into men’s mental health that showed more men were asking for mental health support than ten years ago but were still more likely than women to drink alone or take recreational drugs to deal with negative emotions.

Statistics from the men’s health charity Movember reveal that 75 per cent of all suicides in the UK are committed by men and has funded over 1,000 men’s health projects to help reduce the male suicide rate.

Anyone struggling with their mental health and in need of help can call the Samaritans helpline, open 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, on 116 123.

Anyone considering taking their own life, can also call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline UK between 6pm and 3:30am every day on 0800 689 5652.