 Recently, my father began to feel feelings of anxiety due to health issues. Although the health checkups return negative results, i.e. he is healthy, he continues to feel anxious and it developed into anxiety/depression. He then visited a GP who gave him an antidepressant (AD) 1. He took it for 2\~3 months till he started to feel agitated which led to him cutting off AD1 immediately. He then went to a hospital which gave him another AD2. During the period of consuming AD2, he had terrible side effects (possibly from the drawback from AD1 too) such as unable to urinate and many other symptoms which led to him cutting off any AD entirely. He then stopped eating ADs completely and couldn't decide if he wanted to continue with medicine, after 2 \~ 3 weeks, he decided to pick up AD again as he could not cope with his worsened condition after being off ADs. He got new ADs from a GP again but now he has doubts about hospitals as he had a bad experience before.

He then cancelled all follow-up psychiatrist appointments (ON HIS OWN) from the hospital due to the following reasons:

1. He feels that they do not take him seriously
2. Long waiting hours
3. unable to get to psychiatrist's office alone (family members have work/school)
4. He feels psychologist/counselling will not help him as he feels that his anxiety did not stem from a traumatic event...
5. He is taking medicine from another GP and not the hospital anymore

I am feeling very frustrated right now as he is rejected all sorts of help and he only wants to stay at home and feels depressed and anxious. His anxiety seems to be getting worse over time which makes my family worry for him even more... is he overreliant on the AD? Should he be trying to do more activities? We are not sure how to get him on the road to recovery which is why we are suggesting him to visit a counsellor/psych (along with eating AD) but he is not willing to try as explained from point number 4 above...

I'm looking for help on how to convince my father to see a counsellor/psychologist. Also, what are some other ways for him to recover?