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Two words: Cognitive Therapy
To oversimplify, cognitive therapy states that the world we "see" is not the real world, what we see is our "interpretation" of the world. And whenever we feel depressed, anxious, etc., it's not because of the world per say, but because of how we interpret it. As Shakespeare once wrote "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so."
The goal of cognitive therapy is to get the patient to understand this psychological process and then to systematically analyze our "interpretations" of the world because it is these interpretations that are making us unhappy, not the world itself. And once we can see that it is our "interpretations" that are not serving us, we can change our interpretations, and thus our life.
Studying how the mind works, and cognitive therapy in particular, has helped me immensely get over tough times in the past.
Good luck with your friend man.
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