My (20M) Brother (21M) Refuses To Get Professional Help For His Mental Health Issues and It's Affecting The Whole Family

TW: Suicidal Ideation, Domestic Violence

This is gonna be extremely long as there's a lot of context that I need to give
(p.s. at some point i start referring to my brother just by their age for convenience)

Hi, first, I should give a breakdown about me and our home life: I'm the youngest in my family (6 total: both parents, 2 older brothers and my sister being the oldest) and throughout my life, being at home has come with stress. Mainly from my dad (59M) occasionally being abusive towards our mum (53F). Our house is small, a 3 bedroom council home, if you drew a straight line from one corner to the other of the house, it would be around 9-10 metres. I can recount stories from as young as 6. For example: >!my dad screamed at my mum at the dinner table while we were eating and threatened to pour soup on her head while she cried!< and one night where they fought/argued and my mum held me and my (21M) brother in our bed crying when we were around 5/6, 6/7 respectively. I remember wishing for them to get divorced from when i was in Year 2 (6-7 years old) and going to primary some nights on 2 hours/less of sleep because of another fight where I couldn't sleep. I've always seen my dad as a villain, a domestic abuser, a piece of crap, all of the above. And what makes it worse it hearing my mum blame herself for it, as if she signed a form saying "marry a domestic abuser today". I feel sorry for her more than anything.
You might be confused seeing the title, but this is all to say, we grew up in the same house, and therefore, we share trauma since we experienced these things together.

Onto my relationship with this brother. I'm not close to him, never really have been super close at all. Some of that may be due to the fact that my mum wanted twins so always made us wear similar outfits and be together etc etc. but we're very different people in general. I'm very extroverted, and he's introverted and now that I think about it. Without my eldest brother (24M), we probs would'ev interacted/played even less. We played together as a trio with toys and video games when were kids, up until I started Year 7 (2017, I was 11) the year Fortnite came up and I made friends that I wanted to play with so we took turns playing individually and grew apart since we all had our own friends. In 2024, I moved out to University and have had a much better time not feeling suffocated by all the trauma built up at home. Me, 21 and 24 all shared a room till 24 moved into a spare room around 2020. I don't like being in the room so when I'm back from University, I sleep in the living room sofa as I prefer it + the TV's in front of me so I can watch Youtube :)

I'm realising I haven't said anything about my sister (25F), she's the sibling I'm closest to, but she (to an extent) isn't relevant to the story, so that's all I can say.

As for my other brother (24M), we're not that close, but definitely cordial, I enjoy our conversations, but we definitely became closer in the last year

The point is, we all grew apart over the years, but during birthdays and holidays, we'd all talk together. around, maybe 2024, 21 stopped coming to the dinner table for our birthday celebrations (we just eat cake together and talk) and brushes everyone off. In addition to this, 24M brother go locked up for 6 months which took a toll on everyone, less so on me because we weren't close, but also because I was living in University so didn't physically see the difference in the house without one of us missing, which definitely would've affected everyone's mental state. You might think I'm heartless but I do care about my 24 brother and talked to him through the phone when he was incarcerated and I cried when my sister told me he was getting out.

21 also goes university, and started the same year I did, but chose to stay in our home city, staying home and commuting. As for why, idk. My parents sensed this shift and constantly asked me (understandably) "what happened" between us and always trying to force us to talk/telling me to go talk to him when I'm back from University. The way I see it, he's choosing to be cold to us + is refusing to tell us siblings about the issues so we can't do anything about it. We did confront him about this, which is why I'm making this post, but that will be later in this post. This behaviour had carried on through 2025 and he always slams doors and acts like everyone's bothering him when we don't talk to him/even do anything. We found out later that he's had issues with managers bullying him at work, which, especially as someone introverted, would be extremely hard to deal with. Though, we found this out only a few months ago because my mum told us. There's a theme of major problems happening, and not telling any of us. Which obviously, manifests, and did blow up a few weeks ago.

Confrontation: So, my POS dad is out the country in africa doing a project from June-Sept and so my mum, my sister, 24 brother and I were in the kitchen talking about 21s behaviour and as usual, asking us whether we did anything to him (I can understand why as he doesn't tell the full story of any issue it seems) and told us about the work bullying. (Additional context: he usually works somewhere and quits after around half a year/less. Though I feel like this is the job he's been at the longest despite it seemingly being the worst one, which at a surface level makes no sense, but he may be getting exploited/blackmailed in some way.) We also found out he recently started smoking weed and my mum convinced my 24 brother and sister to go talk to him. I could predict the outcome of him not wanting to told so I stayed in the kitchen and then, I heard doors slamming and screaming and instantly went into the corridor to see 21 telling my siblings "F- OFF, F-OFF, I DON'T WANNA TALK LEAVE ME ALONE" and stuff like that. Eventually, he sat on his bed and my brother and sister and asking him what's wrong for 20 minutes (though it felt like ages) with him shouting at them to F-off the whole time, and in the middle of that storm, we got some info:

1. he doesn't want us to confront his manager 2. He doesn't want to go to HR (I agree with this, HR is built to protect the company rather than employees) 3. He doesn't want another job - I've overheard him telling my mum he got an offer for another job and rejected it (a bus driver in our area - closer than his current job). I didn't say much cause I was already sick of him. He was insulting my siblings (24 and my sister) and when I said "aside from everything else, just make yourself happy" he said, word for word "No, I don't want to" which he was saying most of that argument to any of us suggested we get him any kind of help. My biggest issue however, is that he said that, during the biggest fight between my parents (July 2024) where my dad threatened to hit my sister and said he was going to kill my mum (not the first time either), 21 was upset that we didn't defend dad. Excuse me? You must genuinely be sick in the head (though he probably is) to say that I should defend a domestic abuser who wants to hit his daughter and kill his wife. But no, in 21's eyes, we should've defended him. That solidified him as a pure piece of crap in my mind. Because not only are you rude to everyone despite refusing to raise any of those issues up verbally, you defend domestic abusers and don't care enough about the victims (my mum and my sister in this case). That night, I squared up to him and my 24 brother punched him in the mouth, and dad tried to beat him up and spat at him.

My issue with this and I'm starting to lose my cool typing this so forgive me. If you have all these major issues, with people wanting to help you, you have a bad job with bad managers that you hate, but you refuse to quit despite having better opportunities, you refuse professional help for the sever issues we all know you have, no-one can help you, and you deserve to stay in the hole you're in if you refuse to move. That's me being extremely harsh out of frustration, but what are any of us meant to do? It's clear he has at the very least clinical anxiety and probably severe depression. But why would you not want to change that if people are genuinely to help? And then constantly slamming doors like and a-hole, talking behind my back asking my dad "why I'm back from Uni" like I don't live here, as if b*tch like him deserves a crown on his head because he's gone through hardships? We share some of the same d*mn trauma from living in the same d*mn house all our d*mn childhood.

Now, I received information yesterday from my mother as we had a heart to heart after I refused to say thank you to 21 for buying water in the group chat. Well, specifically, my mum was frustrated that we didn't show appreciation for it and said we should all change and be closer siblings. Whatever. I replied "No thank you" to which 21 replied "stfu" which i deleted. I'm allowed to be petty lol.

In the talk with my mum, she said he'd been bullied in secondary school and had some days where he didn't want to wake up. Which make sense. The behaviour checks out. But hearing her blame herself for us not being close hurt me, because those home isn't a comfortable place for me because my dad is a domestic abuser that lives with us. There's hasn't been a major like July 2024 since. But I haven't forgiven him. Now, what makes even less sense, is that despite that being the case, and despite the fact that my mum is the only person 21 opens up to, 21 still defends dad? The one that threatened to kill the person you open up to? Tell me that's not backwards. PLEASE tell me that's not backwards.

I've had my own issues inc. telling myself I don't deserve to be alive, wishing I was dead (for various reasons) though it never manifested in me wanting to take my own life, so I won't say I was suicidal, feeling like my mind's about to explode being at home, being teased about my alopecia in school (i was gone after 2 years luckily). But I moved out, and I even started therapy this year (it's weekly, over the phone) to talk about my issues and give myself a better future. That's the f-ing difference. I did something about my problems, and want to fix them because I have my whole life ahead of me. I can understand that it's harder for him with his personality type. But insulting and screaming at the people trying to help makes no sense.

What can I do to stop thinking about this? What should be done about this? I've thought about some seriously underhanded tactics, but those would just help me rather than solve the/his issue. I'm stuck at home till my Uni move in date in late September. I'll do my best to deal with it but I really had to vent, especially since I don't have therapy until next month due to my exam resits falling on my therapy times for the next 3 weeks.

If you read this, thank you. I really needed to vent.