According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), men utilize mental-health services at a far lower rate than women, and rarely express mental-health concerns with their primary-care physicians. And so, it should come as no surprise that existing models of suicide prevention, and specifically crisis intervention, have proven to be far more effective with women, who are more likely to take advantage of them in the first place.

John Draper, project director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, said he was surprised to learn that 80 percent of the people who use the organization’s online chat and text-based services are women.

“One of the hopes for the online chat was that we would reach more men,” Draper said. “Our thinking was that for males, communicating on the computer is more comfortable than talking, but that has not been our experience. I think writing about intimate thoughts and feelings online may still be more familiar to females than males, but there may be more of a tendency for males to use the computer to research things and find things out to help themselves, as opposed to engaging people to seek help.”

Billed as “therapy the way a man would do it,” Man Therapy aims to break down the male stigma surrounding mental-health issues and provide a male-friendly way to access support. The multi-agency effort includes the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention, the Carson J Spencer Foundation, and the ad agency Cactus, which frequently works on public-health campaigns.

“We realized that there were very few mental-health campaigns or resources created for males in the U.S., and we didn’t just want to create another crisis hotline,” said Joe Conrad, founder and CEO of Cactus. “We were interested in prevention, but help-seeking behavior is not part of the male psyche and culture in America. We wanted to build a bridge to men who knew something was wrong, knew they needed help, and wanted to fix it.”

Man Therapy’s focal point is the fictional therapist Dr. Rich Mahogany. Dr. Mahogany, a mustached, mature-looking man, sits in an office with a mounted moose head and dart board, among other masculine accoutrement, and welcomes visitors to a place where “men can come to be men.” He also tackles stigmas head on, addressing issues such as depression, divorce, and suicidal thoughts in a male-friendly way.

The site prompts visitors to fill out an 18-point “head inspection” that is used to create a report card of issues and generate recommendations for how to address them. It also provides informational guides, DIY suggestions, and links to professional help.

“What we’ve learned is that many guys don’t want to interact with anybody, even anonymously,” Conrad said. “They don’t want to ask for directions or seek help. They want to figure it out on their own, and get the resources they need to fix themselves.”