PUBS, football grounds and comedy clubs will be called on to help in a new drive tackling male suicide in the county.

Mental health bosses have launched a £10,000 awareness campaign to tackle the much higher suicide rates seen with men than women, often put down to men not feeling able to seek help.

The most recent figures on suicide in Oxfordshire show that 34 men took their lives in 2013,compared to just 10 women.

That is why Oxfordshire’s mental health care provider is “getting the message out” to men in pubs, clubs and football grounds.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which operates the Warneford Hospital and co-ordinates mental health treatment in the county, has announced it will join the national Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

As part of the initiative, health bosses intend to target places where a lot of men often meet, and provide advertising for help and events on tackling mental illness.

Lead nurse for suicide prevention Karen Lascalles said: “What we need to understand is how best we can reach our male population.

“Nationally and globally, suicides are much higher in men. Across the UK the average is 78 per cent more than women.

“Traditionally this is because men don’t speak their mind and keep their feelings bottled up.

“In Oxford we’re committed to getting the message out in more unorthodox ways.

“There would be no point putting a bunch of leaflets in GP surgery, we need to go out and target people who don’t know that there is help.”

Suicide prevention project facilitator Matt Williams has begun speaking to pubs, music venues, and even comedy clubs about new and interesting ways that CALM can get its message across.

Ideas range from having helpline details on beermats, to having people come in and talk about mental health services to sports clubs, to holding a concert based around depression.

Jacky Sadones, whose son Rishi Mullett-Sadones committed suicide aged 20 in 2011, said that it was a good idea in principle.

But the 55-year-old landlady of Jericho’s Old Bookbinders Ale House said: “I don’t know whether I can see men discussing depression over a pint in a pub, but maybe having the advertising might make people think when they’re away from it. If any man is depressed, I’d certainly say the first thing to do is speak to your mum, or a friend, or a doctor .”

The CALM Zone helpline can be reached between 5am and midnight on 0800 585858.

For more information, see thecalmzone.net.