ADVERTISING about delicate health issues is usually straightforward and often sober. But it occasionally takes a humorous approach, as it did in a campaign last year for the Prostate Cancer Foundation by Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, New York, part of MDC Partners. A commercial introduces “The Prostate Czech,” a stocky Eastern European man wearing a tracksuit and a latex glove who offers exams to random men — and gets no takers.

Now humor is being used on an even more unlikely topic: suicide prevention.

A campaign based in Colorado aimed at men ages 25 to 64 introduces a fictional therapist, Dr. Rich Mahogany, an affable, mustachioed, middle-aged man whose personality might be described as Dr. Phil meets Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell’s fictional anchorman.

In a public service announcement and in videos featured on a new Web site, ManTherapy.org, Dr. Mahogany, played by John Arp, is featured in his office, which is filled with items like a mounted moose head, ax and baseball trophies.

“Men have a way of doing things,” he begins in the spot. “A man has his way of eating” — he’s shown eating a sandwich made from an entire loaf of Italian bread. “Of exercising” — he does bicep curls with a bowling ball. “Of keeping his hands warm” — he thrusts his hands down the front of his khakis. “And of straightening out” — he uses a leaf blower to clear his desk of stacks of paper.