Get stable first using meds is my advice. Meds won't make you feel 'comfortable and normal', but they will stop you feeling horrible and hurting yourself or others.
Some forms of recalcitrant mono-polar depression respond well to mood stabilizers and/or sedatives. Mood stabilizers are
normally reserved for people with bipolar and schizo-affective disorders, but can be used 'off label'. Seek a shrink who is willing to experiment with lithium, anti-epileptics, anti-psychotics, sedatives (but not benzos since they are addictive). Fish oil and krill oil are also good mood stabilizers (not as potent as synthetic meds but worth a shot). If there's a strong anxiety component, valerian works if you take enough of it. It's a herb.
I believe depression is the body's adaptive response to chronic severe anxiety. There's lots of theories - that's the one I subscribe to.
If it's correct, then you really need to treat the anxiety rather than the depression, and that's what I try to do. So far I'm reasonably satisfied with my progress, however I'm a long way from cured,
so keep that in mind. My practice is to relax enough to allow the fear to emerge. When you fully relax your tense areas (especially around chest, throat and solar plexus), the fears locked down in those areas get released. If you're on meds all the time, or carry massive muscular tension, you will be kept arm's length distance from the fear, so reducing med intake is one option you can take (only to be done under close medical supervision in case you 'lose it' and don't know what to do). Encourage the fear in any way you can. Then attend to it, at the 'bare sensate' level. Label it 'that sensation', if you think that helps - it doesn't for me btw. Initially my fears hit me like a truck, so hard and fast I didn't know where i was. The darkest, loneliest most horrific fear I could imagine. I learnt to modify the meds up/down to allow a workable (small) amount of fear to emerge without overwhelming me. For me, it was more important to 'up' the meds because the fear was too strong. Then work them back down as the fear drops away, over a number of days/weeks/months. It's a work in progress for me. As I said, not cured yet. More work to do before deciding whether it can take me all the way or just part way.
I also like the idea of facing your fears in everyday life, using the same process. Any circumstance, situation, event or task that creates anxiety or depression, treat the same way. Sometimes it takes most guts to simply 'be yourself'. "Be who you be if you're comin' with me" as Gallagher said. What this amounts to is self acceptance, warts and all.
It's not so much a matter of your parents being against meditation, more that they are scared you'll go psychotic again and really you should be able to understand that they care about you and don't want those episodes to repeat. That's normal and caring behaviour. The psych doctors may well have warned against meditating and if they did, that's quite a reasonable bit of advice IMO. Maybe try explaining what you're going to try, and give your parents/doctors a time frame in order to test whether it's going to help. Then everyone knows what's going on. Tell them if a months worth of practice doesn't help, that you will write it off. Leave it. Try something else. But be upfront.
"carried away by the police while sitting in a lotus position trying to meditate". Humour is a great short term stress reliever. I'm not making light of your suffering at all, but there is a funny side to it.

See if you can see it!