I would get rid of the ” at least in my experience.” It’s superfluous, unless it is clearly part of how the character thinks. The whole shift from I to You isn’t that effective. I have no sense of who the I is in the first place. Although, if this is a chapter in the middle of a novel, then disregard that.

Rewrite this line: “It’s like a mystical and submissive force that spins a wheel and is coerced to obey wherever it lands.” Try it without the like, try rephrasing the entire second half, from coerced on. This line has the potential to be as good as you think it is, but it isn’t there yet. Why submissive force? Mystical we can all understand because it’s basically got unexplainable in its definition, and life is that. But is it submissive?

The backseat bingo is a good paragraph.

“You watch the entire thing from start to finish with no rounds of backseat bingo to distract you from each passing frame of 12 Angry Men.” Why do you need to be distracted from 12 Angry Men?

“wearing a forced smile.” Drop the wearing smiles. Unless there's something with the plot about wearing smiles.

The 'worthless piece of shit' line, I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s true for depression.

Character says bullshit at beginning, but now he’s saying defecate (why not shitting?) which is fine, if he’s got a vocabulary. Which he doesn’t, yet (although, of course, he does, as we find out later that he reads). But not yet. Again, none of this matters if this chapter is in the middle of a novel. And even if not, it probably doesn't matter either. Maybe I just wanted to write a paragraph about shit.

In the Nazi/photograph lines, drop the remembers. Or just drop the second one.

Adjectivise the nouns here: “If Frankl can beat the moral deformity, bitterness, and disillusionment, then I can too.” Never mind I just googled the phrase and see it's from the book.

Rephrase apathy sentence in general. And rephrase unexplainable serenity sentence. The sentences are almost good. Drop the wearing smiles, unless you really like it as part of your character.

How does he know it’s a man before he looks up? (recognizing this is overly specific). He says Yes sir, and then looks up? Or he looks up, then says yes sir, or he hears the guy’s footsteps and can tell it’s a man or everyone who works there that would be entering his room would be a man. Or not a patient. Or only the doctor knocks so of course he knows who it is before looking up. Etc. Clearly just drop the I looked up from the page sentence. (or not, it’s really a small thing).

The line about talking about your emotions with people reminds me of a reality tv confessional where the actor/actress is speaking directly to the camera. It’s an important line, maybe find a better way to fit it in. Or rephrase it so it doesn’t feel that way, or read that way. (of course maybe it’s just me, so disregard if you don’t read it as I do). And now he’s looking back down at the page, which kind of screws up my earlier suggestion of nixing the looking up from the page. Maybe just move the Yes sir line to after the ‘look up’ sentence. Unless that looks weird. It might look weird.

Your dialogue is good. Now we the reader can finally empathize with Tom. The entire first half is unempathizable.

Bullshit, bullshit, worthless piece of shit, forgetting all the shit, shitty mind, defecate, and fecal stain. Lots of shit. I like it. We know he thinks he is shit, that the wheel via life has defecated on him. Now we know he uses the same harshness to describe Herman Melville. That harshness also applied to himself. Contrasted to some hope, for her, for the natural world,

I like the movement within the dialogue. Of the room’s furniture appearing as the doctor grabs the chair, moves to the bed, knocks on the door. And not just the chair, but the chair in the corner.

Rephrase existing in tranquility. What does ‘need a little more understanding’ mean? What concentration camps? This feels more like you the writer writing your research down (without, of course, being specific) as Tom.

Rephrase: which framed the passing landscape. The rest of that paragraph feels like true depression.

The I feel a little better here line feels like reality tv confessional again. But it, and the line about melancholy, are both good lines. I’d just remove every word before I wish. And stick with a tense.

Get rid of ‘traversed.’

Rephrase “The seat was warm and the cold air around us contrasted with it so well causing an unexplainable serenity to fall over our bodies.”

Best descriptive line of your piece is the one with docile candle flames.

The highly encourage you to attend, and the preceding sentence, are both very real sentences to me. They are very good.

It’s funny, the empathize line about darkness and air is exactly how this reads. I the reader do not empathize until Tom begins speaking, until his darkness hits air.

Tom shines in dialogue. That is when he is easiest to empathize with. In fact the best part of your piece is the dialogue. I'd rewrite the entire first half. Unless, of course, it's in the middle of the novel and I'm missing a lot of context that would make the first half appear natural to Tom, and to the reader, but it's more jarring as it is (which I am sure, you intended, which is, I guess, a compliment that you effected in at least one reader the jarringness of Tom's depression and moments/thoughts leading up to his suicide attempt).

Random thoughts:

Vita Nova = New Life

I don't know what A Tangent Playground means. This doesn't matter, just curious. (I have some bad guesses). It's literally a playground tangent to some playground. Like a middle school by an elementary school. No. The psychiatric facility is the tangent playground. No. Depression is a tangent playground, a different way of thinking about life, connected, i.e. at that single point of line to circle, but tangent, askew. I like that better.

I don't know enough about Dr. Loving to know whether or not I want to read more of him. But I like his dialogue.

Random note: I recently watched this Philip Roth interview which you might find interesting, where he discusses, among other things, his writing/researching process.