I am not usually the kind of person to ask for advice from strangers on the internet but right now I see no other way to find help without invading the privacy of the person who this is about.
My husband and I have been friends with this person for several years. He used to be my husband's friend and colleague with the lines blurring after a while and occasional dinner invites turning into us seeing him as part of our family. For the sake of this post I will refer to him as Leo and to my husband as David.
Leo is very easygoing, always in a good mood, very charismatic and sometimes annoyingly so. There have been times where I got the impression that his smile wasn't genuine or that he wasn't as happy as he appeared to be. But those times there were obvious things going on in his life that explained why he would be feeling down. I never saw any signs of mental illness in him - and neither did David.
Until last night when Leo called David, obviously very drunk and David went to check on him. David then called me to let me know that he'd We didn't even know that he was taking antidepressants.
Depression isn't always obvious and many people hide it well, I know that. And yet, despite that knowledge, Leo is the last person I would have expected to do something like this.
We thought we knew him and then he goes and does something like this. He knows he can always call us, he knows we are always there for him and we will do anything to help him. What is so bad that he thought he couldn't tell us and puts his own life in danger like this instead? How is it possible that we never noticed that he was feeling this bad? I try to understand but nothing makes any sense.