Was This the Real Condition Behind Robin Williams's Suicide?

Dec. 28, 2015

In my post, "The Tragic Side of Comedy: Where the Pain Lives," posted after Robin Williams's suicide , I suggested that his suicide might be attributed to a combination of factors-a mood disorder , substance abuse , and a recent diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease. 

More recently, in a revealing interview, Williams's widow, Susan Schneider Williams, said that it was not major depression that drove her husband to suicide but a rare brain disease called Lewy Body Dementia that can resemble Parkinson's and is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson'sIn my post, "The Tragic Side of Comedy: Where the Pain Lives," posted after Robin Williams's suicide, I suggested that his suicide might be attributed to a combination of factors—a mood disorder, substance abuse, and a recent diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease. More recently, in a revealing interview, Williams's widow, Susan Schneider Williams, said that it was not major depression that drove her husband to suicide but a rare brain disease called Lewy Body Dementia that can resemble Parkinson's and is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson's. She told in heart-wrenching detail about how she and Williams struggled for more than a year to figure out what was wrong with him.

As Psychiatric Times explained, it is a challenge not to miss a general medical cause when addressing symptoms that appear to be psychiatric, especially when looking at an already diagnosed psychiatric disorder. And Williams had suffered for years with substance abuse and a mood disorder; further, at the end of his life, was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, leading some to speculate that his depression resulted from Parkinson's.

Before his suicide, his medical doctors had been working up his Parkinson's diagnosis and searching for any other neurological disorders. His psychiatrist reportedly wanted to hospitalize him for more extensive neuropsychological testing, but Williams refused. More recently, a coroner’s report revealed that Williams suffered from Lewy body dementia, a rather rare, difficult-to-diagnose condition that can resemble Parkinson's.

When a patient is diagnosed with a slow developing dementia of any type, the most disturbing period is the interval between more “normal” cognition and no longer realizing that one's thinking is impaired, an interval of recognition that he is literally losing his mind (or more technically, part of the brain). When Parkinson's was diagnosed, undoubtedly Williams knew he was losing his ability to access his wonderfully creative brain, which may have led him to think that he should take his own life before this occurred. If this is so, then his decision to take his own life might be considered less of an act of depressive desperation.

This brilliant man who brought the joy of laughter into the lives of so many people is sorely missed.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mind-body-connection/201512/was-the-real-condition-behind-robin-williamss-suicide