One of my good friends (29 years old) has been very depressed for about a year. He does not believe in psychology, but after much persuasion, we convinced him to see a therapist. Unfortunately, we all (including the therapist, who is a counsellor) think he needs a psychiatrist, and he won't go. I am a graduate student in psychology, and I am convinced that he has major depressive disorder. His mother is bipolar, so there is a history. He is completely caught up in the societal stigma surrounding mental health; I have tried to explain that it is the same as having diabetes or a heart condition...it requires medication to balance the chemicals.
My real problem is that he is extremely irritable when he is not crying, to the extent that I get a daily dose of abuse. I have explained to him that I will be there for him no matter what, but I won't put up with his attacks. He knows that he has a problem, but he has been overdramatizing little things that we (his friends) have done/have not done to make him worse, and I'm tired of constantly defending our friendship to him. There is nothing that we can say or do anymore to alleviate his insecurities, and I'm running out of patience for him. Much of our lives revolve around him, and it is starting to take a negative toll on us. We got his parents involved, but he directs his anger at us.
At what point do you change strategies? He is terribly pessimistic and believes that his problems are all due to outside forces, but they are all easily fixed (he's just not capable of seeing that). I burst into tears the other day when I made plans to talk to him, because our conversations are useless and circular, and I am completely drained. What do I do?