It has been more than a year since comic genius Robin Williams hanged himself at his home in California. Now, his widow, Susan Williams, has openly talked about the last year of his life, when he was fighting a neurological condition called Diffuse Lewy body dementia (DLB).
Susan Williams now says that it was the dementia that caused Robin Williams to kill himself, rather than depression. She spoke out in an interview with People magazine and ABC News as a way of educating the public about DLB, which is also called dementia with Lewy bodies.
"It was not depression that killed Robin," Susan said in the People interview. "Depression was one of let's call it 50 symptoms and it was a small one."
A few days after he died in August 2014, Susan Williams released a statement saying that Robin had been dealing with depression, anxiety, and also what appeared to be the early stages of Parkinson's disease. However, DLB is frequently confused with Parkinson's disease because they have many of the same symptoms and those symptoms keep changing.
"They present themselves like a pinball machine," Susan Williams says. "You don't know exactly what you're looking at."
DLB can cause fluctuations in mental status, hallucinations, and impairment of motor function, which can include stiffness and difficulty in movement. Lewy bodies are clumps of proteins in the neurons. The disease affects about one million people in the United States.
Other symptoms of DLB can include anxiety and visual hallucinations. Robin Williams' symptoms got worse in the last months of his life. He experienced severe anxiety attacks, had an accident that left his head bloodied, and experienced muscle rigidity. But his doctors could not make an exact diagnosis. The correct diagnosis of DLB can be made only after an autopsy was conducted.
"This was a very unique case and I pray to God that it will shed some light on Lewy bodies for the millions of people and their loved ones who are suffering with it," Susan Williams said. "Because we didn't know. He didn't know."
