Sad story. I wonder whether he might have benefitted from a mindfulness based therapy. Unfortunately, some depressions are more difficult to treat than others. Very qualified doctors that I know would disagree with the notion that "it’s still not clear that [antidepressants] are better than placebos." They would argue that antidepressants are overprescribed to people that do not in fact have biological depression, lowering the effectiveness rate. Lastly, it should be noted that ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), is actually one of the most effective treatments for depression, and one that carries minimal harmful side effects (although short-term memory loss is one such side effect).