I had a friend who tried to commit suicide. All I can tell you is to keep talking to him. Or better yet, listen. Lots of my friends have stuff going on in their lives and they know they can come to me and just vent, cause they know I'll listen. That may be all your friend needs, is someone to listen to him. (If ya'll are already doing that, keep on! :) )
I hope that was of help, and I wish the best for your friend.



~Rizu-Mizu~

[QUOTE=love_me_always;249351]i have a friend and hes always been depressed and me and my friends try to help. hes been to the hospital twice for mental evaluations but all they do is prescribe meds. hes so negative thats why. no matter what u say good or positive he knows how to bring it down. what do i do?
i love him to death but its so hard![/QUOTE]

I will attempt to give a perspective from the point of view of someone who has been suicidal and depressed.  Unfortunately, it looks like your friend and I suffer from a very different type of depression.  I have clinical double depression with psychosis.  Fortunately, I responded to antidepressants and antipsychotics.  Before that I was in talk therapy accomplishing very little.  At the end of each session, my counselor procured a promise from me that I would not kill myself between then and the next session.  She also had me promise that if I felt that I wanted to commit suicide, I would call someone else and stay in that person's company.  That kept me alive until the antidepressants kicked in.

[QUOTE=Diarmuid;434715]I had a friend who told me she was going to commit suicide....and I gave her the toughest love I could.
I smacked her upside the head and told her to get over herself and understand that there are millions of people going through the same thing and it is a SELFISH idea to be willing to put your loved ones through all that hurt, just because you feel "depressed" one day. I asked her if she cared for me. She said yes. And I told her if she really did, she wouldn't put me through all that SHIT I would have to go through if she did such a thing.
That was two years ago. And she is doing great.
I am not saying you should do the same thing to your friend, but get it through to him that you care for him and if he cares for you, then he would try to get out of such a mess and wn't put you through it as well.[/QUOTE]

Diarmuid, I am very glad that you found a method for your friend which worked.  One thing that I want to warn about is that in some forms of depression, particularly sever ones, though love could be quite detrimental.  Love_me_always, I would encourage you to trend very carefully on this topic.  In my personal case, though love would certainly of made things much, much harder.

Have you posted this topic in the depression support forum?  Good luck to both you and your friend.