The first thing I would like to say is how proud I am of all the open-mindedness in your thoughts....how you went from "suicide is selfish" to all of this.

Also, the next few things I say are just details....the bit at the bottom is the important bit.

To me, everything he's worried about does not seem like something he should really worry about so much, but he does.

You have different views on life. If he's worried about it, then maybe, for him, it's worth worrying about. Maybe it doesn't seem that way to you, but clearly, he believes it's a real problem. It's worth worrying about, and it's cause enough for him to want to end his life.

Don't try to "convince" him that it's not really worth worrying about. And that those things aren't really important. Maybe they are, at least to him;

He isn't passionate about what he's studying, so maybe he needs something to be passionate about.

it could help, but from personal experience, I had a lot of things I was passionate about when I was in a good place. They did not help at all once depression started setting in, and after the depression left, they didn't help the suicidal thoughts. I'm not saying it couldn't help, I'm saying don't depend on it to fix him.

I'm hoping his family can convince him to talk to a therapist and they can show him a different perspective that is unbiased.

Note that a therapists opinion is never unbaised. They have a very specific agenda in this case....convince you at any cost not to kill yourself. And so they're not coming at it from an unbiased point where all decisions have equal validity, they're coming at it from the perspective that if you don't agree that you shouldn't kill yourself, you're probably going to end up in a lot of therapy or potentially a hospital.

Important bit: You keep asking how to help, so here is my experience. When I was depressed or suicidal, or both, people were always trying to fix me. make me not depressed. Make me happy all the time. pressuring me to get help. usually either drugs or therapy, neither of which helped.

Eventually I ran into a friend who told me, when I hinted how badly i wanted to die and kill myself, that she loved me, and she was my friend, and that she wasn't going to pressure me into (or even suggest) therapy, or meds, or spirituality, or whatever. She was just going to sit there with me, and unless I brought up my thoughts, we didn't talk about them. She hugged me, and we hung out with other friends sometimes, but she never tried to get me to go see anyone. She was just physically there for me, and if i had ever looked for help, she would have supported that too. That friend ship probably kept me alive more times than anything else. I'm still suicidal....very much so. It didn't really get any better. But knowing that there was someone just....there....that i could hug or talk to, or just cry on, helped more than anything else.

All the drugs, therapy, self help, everything....that friendship helped more because i knew the goal wasn't to change me, or how i felt, or how i thought. It wsa to be there regardless of how i felt, or thought, or was. That same friend told me she loved me enough and understood the pain that i was in enough that if i did die, she would understand. She would hurt, but she knew how much pain i was in. And hearing that, more than anything, helped.