Rhode Island Debuts 'Man Therapy' Campaign for Men in Crisis

Rhode Island health officials have launched "Man Therapy," a campaign built around a blunt-talking fictional therapist and ads placed where working-age men already are, in an effort to steer more of them toward mental health care. From 2020 through 2024, nearly 400 men in the state died by suicide, and the campaign's target audience — men ages 25 to 64 — accounts for the highest share.

The campaign runs through April on the web, on social media and on gas station advertising screens, and points to mantherapy.org, which covers depression, divorce and suicide for men and for the people around them. Rhode Island-specific resources sit under a "Get Support Close to Home" tab. Visitors are greeted by Dr. Rich Mahogany, a fictional therapist whose deliberately unpolished manner is meant to defuse the idea that asking for help is a weakness.

"This site and this new campaign are a way for people to learn more about men's mental health, examine their own challenges, and consider steps that can put them on the path to treatment and recovery," said Director of Health Jerry Larkin.

The numbers behind the campaign

The state's suicide prevention work concentrates on men in their prime working years, and the data explain why. Averaged across the five years from 2020 to 2024, the suicide rate among Rhode Island men ran nearly twice the rate for the state's population overall, at roughly 79 deaths a year.

The pattern inside those deaths is also clear. In 61 percent of cases involving men ages 25 to 64, a current mental health problem was known at the time of death — meaning the condition was visible before the crisis, not hidden from everyone. In a 2024 state survey, 10.9 percent of men said they usually or always feel lonely.

"It's been talked about in the media as a 'male loneliness epidemic,'" said Deirdre O'Donnell, who manages the Rhode Island Department of Health's Violence and Injury Prevention Program. "There is a lot of stigma and fear around talking about their mental health, opening up."

Humor as a doorway

Man Therapy is a national campaign that Rhode Island has adopted rather than built from scratch, and its method is unusual for public health messaging. Rather than leading with risk statistics, it leads with a joke. One of its taglines invites men to "get under the hood of your mental health." The site walks users through a "head inspection" that functions as a self-assessment, then generates a list of local clinicians and resources based on the answers.

"Man Therapy is a national campaign that uses humor and relatability to try to open up that door to help men ultimately feel comfortable reaching out for support," O'Donnell said. She described the mascot as drawing on familiar, hyper-masculine archetypes — the handy neighbor, the fisherman, the construction worker — so that a conversation about depression can start somewhere other than a doctor's office.

The state has run related outreach before. Man Therapy follows a campaign called "You Good, Man?" that encouraged men to check in on friends and colleagues, and the department has received a federal grant for youth suicide prevention covering Rhode Islanders up to age 24.

Why the message targets men specifically

O'Donnell said the gap between men's suicide rates and the general population's reflects both biology and conditioning, and that the two reinforce each other.

"There are definitely biological components of this, but there's also societal conditioning that reinforces all of those messages," she said. "And then it becomes a feedback loop where people internalize these messages and think somehow that they're failing if they don't adhere to them."

She said the clearest opening for prevention is that warning signs usually appear in front of someone close to the person at risk — a spouse, a parent, a child — before a crisis becomes acute. That is the reason the campaign spends as much effort on the people around men as on men themselves.

"I think if we learn how to lean into the idea that it's okay to not be okay — it's okay to ask for help — and lean into that vulnerability a little bit more and offer genuine spaces that are going to welcome that for men and for peers, that's how we actually really move the needle," she said.

Where to get help

Men who recognize themselves in the campaign's questions, and families who want screening and treatment options, can start with the resources collected by the state at preventsuicideri.org. Clinical depression is treatable, and treatment typically combines talk therapy with medication when symptoms are moderate or severe.

The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available around the clock by call or text, and Rhode Island residents who are unsure where to begin can also reach the state's own crisis services through the campaign site. The department's message to men in the target age range is a single, repeated instruction: ask before the moment when asking stops being possible.