My son is 18 and just graduated high school in May. He was always quiet and not very social growing up and through high school. He's smart as most of his classes were advanced and he kept his grades up.

Going back to grade and middle school, he was well liked by all of the kids, but when they would say hi or try to talk to him he would barely say anything.

Last year one of his friends, Tom, from school asked him to start going to these group functions for teens at a local church once a week and a different one at a community center once a week. We thought that was great for him to get out and be around other teens.

Everything was fine for about a year until earlier the beginning of this year something happened. One day we got a call from his guidance counselor that he was punching the walls at school, he said he was angry because he felt lonely.

About a week later he started punching the walls in his room one night, and was very upset. He said he's angry, Tom didn't like him any more, and he didn't want to live like that anymore. We took him to a psych center that night and he was admitted for a night because he told them he was having suicide thoughts.

Things went back to normal for a while, he graduated in May and was deciding where he wanted to go to college. These group functions stopped for the summer and he was back to hanging out by himself.

About 3 weeks ago the police showed up at our door in the middle of the night asking for him. Apparently he was texting Tom (who had been out of town for a while) that he was going to hurt himself and he called 911. He admitted this to the police and they took him back to the psych hospital. This time he stayed for four nights as they wanted to evaluate him some more. They diagnosed him with severe depression and want him to have testing done for autism, which is scheduled for next week.

He was back home and fine again for about a week, but now he's in a state where he stays in bed most of the time. If he's up it's during the night because he comes out to eat. We can hear him crying in his room. My wife and I talked to his friend Tom and he doesn't know what to do anymore, saying my son calls him 30 times a day and texts another 50 times. I think he's in the state he's in right now because Tom has pretty much stopped communicating with him, and told him that he needs to figure out how to get better. Tom is almost the direct opposite of my son, he is very social, has a lot of friends, has had at least one serious girlfriend that we know of.

Tom is starting college next week out of town. My son has since said he wants to wait until next semester to start college now.

Part of me thinks that claiming to want to hurt himself thing was for attention, but I don't want to be wrong. When I do talk to him, he just says he's ok and wants to lay down, and claims he doesn't want to hurt himself anymore and does not want to go back to the hospital. They gave him prozac, 10mg, but he stopped taking it because he said it wasn't helping.

I feel so bad for him. We just don't know what to do. Now that he doesn't have school, he has nothing to do. Do we just wait and see how these test results come back? What then? Thanks for any advice.