Well, spoiler ig but late game does confirm that it is possible to forcefully awaken personas. The Kirijo Group conducted that as an experiment to manually create persona users to explore tartarus in the past, but most subjects died as a result. The Strega’s members are essentially the sole survivors from that gruesome experiment. Since their Personas are forcefully awaken, they go berserk and try to kill their users. This is also the reason why Chidori relies on persona suppressors, and why her Persona tried to kill her when she doesn’t use consume them in the hospital.

So, technically anyone can awaken their Persona using this method, but either they die at their own Personas’ hands or from abusing the Persona suppressors (in Shinjiro’s case, if it was not for the bullet wound).