How do I help my friend?

DISCLAIMER- bit of backstory here, is important to my main point so please read

Post contains topics such as mental health issues

How do I help my friend, he has come to our school from Yorkshire, quite a secluded part of it. He had little to no friends at his old school, and was very shy for the first couple of years. I befriended him and he started hanging around with us, but then he started to display some very strange behaviour - one of my friends played a joke on him, he lashed out unexpectedly aiming to seriously injure my friend. We were shocked, and soon I started to realise that he must have some kind of mental health problem. This was confirmed when he had what I can only describe as a panic attack in front of me and another friend, my friend caught him whilst he was falling to the ground.

Fast forward to present day, he opened up about how his mum attempted to overdose in front of him 3 times, once when he was just 8 years old (he's 15 now). This completely changed my perspective on him, and I finally understood his tendencies to lash out, and his overall extreme social awkwardness- any suggestions for how I can now begin to help him overcome his issues?

Reply 1

username6255808

Best to tell him to go to the GP to seek professional help for the mental health issues as they can prescrible him meds.

He has a short temper and anger issues.