Esports platform Challengermode has teamed up with the Mental Health Foundation and Rise Against the Disorder to raise awareness of mental health issues for this year’s Mental Health Awareness month (MHAM).
They’re running a Play2Help Rocket League charity tournament, will share encouraging content through the Challengermode platform and raise funds for Mental Health organisations.
Streamers and influencers are getting involved – including Liam ‘zRvkk’ Bloomfield of UK esports organisation Lionscreed – to help raise money for charities across the UK and the US. They will stream the event on their platforms to spread the message around mental health awareness.
As well as providing tips on how to better understand mental wellbeing in relation to gaming, Challengermode will seed short messages into pre- and post-game tournament chats to raise awareness.
The main charity tournament will take place on Saturday May 28th 2022.
Simona Dailidonyte, product marketing manager at Challengermode, said: “At Challengermode, we’re a part of gamers’ everyday life and we want to use our position to raise awareness of mental health and wellbeing – particularly among the millions of young gamers that we reach every day.
“Our goal is to spread the message about mental health and how, if done right, gaming can help people who are dealing with mental disorders like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and PTSD.
“We’re proud to be raising awareness for mental health and raising funds for the Mental Health Foundation in their goal of creating a world of good mental health for all, and we look forward to learning from their considerable expertise when deciding how best we can help support player’s mental health in gaming and esports in the long term.”
Challengermode has run other charity initiatives in the past, including supporting SpecialEffect in a CSGO charity tournament.
European players looking to get involved in this latest initiative are able to qualify for the tournament in the week leading up to the main event. Open qualifiers will be held on May 23rd and 25th in the Play2Help Space on Challengermode, where players can sign up to the qualifiers by paying an entry fee of any amount.
More mental health awareness month news: Safe in our World shares new programs to raise support
Video games mental health charity, Safe In Our World, has announced a series of new initiatives and milestones to continue its charter of raising awareness for the charity and mental health during May for Mental Health Awareness Month.
Throughout the month, Safe In Our World will be delivering talks and facilitating discussions around mental health specifically within the industry.
After the delivery of mental health training to 200 community managers, the charity has committed to train 150 more by the end of 2022. It is also offering a Safe In Our World Crisis Hub, and has appointed two new members of staff: Benn Wiebe joins as the strategy and corporate partnerships officer and Sky Tunley-Stainton takes the role of partnerships and training officer.
Four new trustees have also joined: Suneet Sharma, Alex Boucher, Ian Harman and Gem Abdeen.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
