THE life of a man who killed himself at the tender age of 25 will be celebrated by his friends at a gig tomorrow to raise money for mental health charity Mind.

Esme Willis wants others who are struggling to receive the help she believes best friend Alex Wetherell missed out on.

“I just want to raise a bit more awareness of young male suicide," she told the Adver. “It’s awful and especially in this day and age, people should be able to talk to anybody and I still don’t think the help is there.

“But the stigma with mental health is still massive and it shouldn’t be now. I think we just need to do as much as we can.”

Alex, who died in September last year, was never diagnosed with mental ill health and Esme, 26, believes he did not get the help he needed.

She said: “He had a few mental health issues, but it was really sad because he never got diagnosed with a mental health condition, so he knew that something was wrong, but he felt that whenever he went to the GP or he went to see somebody, they didn’t take him seriously.

“But he did suffer with anxiety and depression in general. I think if he had the right help in the first place, and spoke to the right group, may be it wouldn’t have happened but it’s awful really," she said.

“He was great, he was such a good laugh. He was a closed sort of person, he would talk but when it comes to mental health I guess people still closed up about it.”

News of Alex's death came out of the blue. “I was not expecting that, I was going to see the band Arctic Monkeys in London, so we’ve been there the day before in London," she said.

“I was having breakfast and one of my old friends from school messaged me and said: 'I need to talk to you.' He rang me and at that point I knew that something had happened, my heart dropped when she told me Alex killed himself.

“And I just froze, I was stood outside this café and you’ve got this madness going in front of you, with people talking, cars going past, people getting on with their daily life. And I’m stood frozen, it was just unreal, and it was so hard to process it and you don’t really know what to do.”

The pair grew up in Moredon and knew each other for more than two decades.

“We did everything together; I’ve known him since I was about four years of age.

“Although I moved away to Reading, he came up all the time, partying, drinking and going to see bands because he was a massive music fan, so we used to go to gigs all the time, which is really why we are doing the gig really because he was so into music.”

Esme was helped by Alex’s step sister Katie Woodford to organise it.

The event at the Queen's Tap will feature live music, glitter stations, face painting an auction and a raffle including tickets to any gig at the O2 Academy Oxford and to Swindon Town Football Club. It starts at 12pm.