I brought up the parents shouldering some of the blame because Texasmom mentioned “The roommate has immigrant parents with certain expectations for him, including this school and this major for this son. I am sure that his why he came back.”
While mental illness is certainly a possibility and certainly there is something going on, parental pressures are in fact a huge source of anxiety and a spiral to mental issues for many college kids. The ones that I know are the unhappiest at school (and in life) are those just being a robot for their parents. That was the point. If they have been trained to have little input into the direction of their life, that is just sad, and unfortunately there are a lot of them out there paying off some imposed debt to their parents, and we aren’t talking poor first gen kids. Expectations on your kids is normal, be we all know people whose kids have little choice in their life, at least through college.
So no, we don’t know exactly what is up with this kid, but the fact he was miserable and came back gives a hint to the home situation.