How did robin williams die and why

Lewy body dementia: What Robin Williams' widow wants you to know

CNN —

After Robin Williams died by suicide in August 2014, his widow, Susan Schneider Williams, would soon learn about a disease she had never heard of, but one that had haunted both of their lives.

That disease is Lewy body dementia, with which the actor was diagnosed in October 2014 following an autopsy on his brain. “A few months before he passed, he was given a Parkinson’s (disease) diagnosis,” said Schneider Williams, an artist and advocate for LBD awareness and research, at the Life Itself conference, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN. “But that was just the tip of the iceberg.”

The misdiagnosis occurred in May 2014 after Robin had been experiencing severe memory, movement, personality, reasoning, sleep and mood changes.

The comedian had undergone multiple tests to identify his problem, most of which were negative. “None of the doctors knew that there was this ghost disease underlying all of this,” Schneider Williams told CNN in an interview. “When that was revealed, that was like essentially finding out the name of my husband’s killer.”

Schneider Williams and Robin dine at a restaurant to celebrate her 50th birthday in 2014.

Susan Schneider Williams

Dementia is a disorder of mental processes marked by memory dysfunction, personality changes and impaired reasoning due to brain disease or injury. The exact cause of LBD, which affects about 1.4 million Americans, is unknown. But the disease is associated with the accumulation of the protein alpha-synuclein, which is typically present in the brain and in small amounts in the heart, muscle and other tissues. Alpha-synuclein might help regulate neurotransmitters. But when this protein accumulates and forms masses (called Lewy bodies) within the brain, the effects are devastating.

Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease dementia are the two types of Lewy body dementias, which are the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.

Because LBD initially presents similarly to Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, it’s often misdiagnosed. And since Lewy body proteins can’t be tested like Alzheimer’s proteins, LBD cases are often diagnosed after death when families request autopsies for closure or more details, or to donate a loved one’s brain for research.

Close up of woman stirring coffee while sitting at table in cafe || Model approval available Photo by: Channel Partners/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Channel Partners/dpa/picture-alliance/AP

Your morning cups of coffee and tea could be associated with lower risk of stroke and dementia

Typically for undiagnosed LBD patients who initially exhibit movement issues, doctors first diagnose them with Parkinson’s disease since it is a movement disease. If those patients later develop dementia as well, they are often diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease dementia. More specific changes in cognitive function, too, over time can lead to the diagnosis “dementia with Lewy bodies.” Although Lewy bodies are common with Parkinson’s disease, not all Parkinson’s patients will develop LBD.

Misdiagnosis and overlapping symptoms can lead to a world of confusion for patients and their families, so for Schneider Williams, finally learning the truth behind her husband’s “pain and suffering” was a “pinprick of light,” she said.

“That’s when my own healing started to begin,” she said. “We had this experience with something that was invisible and terrifying, truly. And then on the other side of it, I’m left to find out the science underneath it that helped explain this experience. Robin wasn’t crazy. That was one of his biggest fears.”

So that other patients and caregivers can experience the same truth, understanding and healing, Schneider Williams has been in a “rabbit hole of discovery” and advocacy for eight years now. She has served on the board of the American Brain Foundation for six years, helped establish the Lewy Body Dementia Fund and its $3 million research grant award aimed at finding an accurate biomarker, and contributed to the documentaries “Robin’s Wish” and “Spark: Robin Williams and His Battle with Lewy Body Dementia.”

Schneider Williams speaks about LBD awareness and research at the 2021 BioHive Summit in Utah.

Katelin Roberts

“I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell this story,” Schneider Williams said. “I had no idea the journey I was about to begin on. But I had to go there.”

Doctors and researchers wanting to mitigate the kinds of experiences her husband endured “have a tall order,” she said, “but progress is being made.”

Lewy body dementia has more than 40 symptoms that can randomly appear and disappear, Schneider Williams said. Categorically, the signs include impaired thinking, fluctuations in attention, problems with movement, visual hallucinations, sleep disorders, behavioral and mood issues, and changes in bodily functions such as the ability to control urinating.

What “marked the beginning of a cascade of symptoms” was when her husband started experiencing never-ending fear and anxiety, Schneider Williams said. It began to happen in 2012 when Williams started to pull back from engaging with people at the Throckmorton Theatre in California, where he would try new material out and riff with other comedians just for fun, she added.

The anxieties persisted beyond what Williams had experienced in the past and what is normal for a beloved actor living with the pressures of being on a world stage.

Eventually, paranoia was another significant symptom, Schneider Williams said. “It was the amygdala region of his brain that had a ginormous amount of the Lewy bodies. So that area of the brain is really our ability to regulate our emotions, particularly fear and anxiety. And Robin’s was basically broken.”

Shutterstock

Find your sleep 'sweet spot' to protect your brain as you age, study suggests

Toward the end, Williams also experienced delusional looping. “Your brain is concocting a story of what you think reality is,” Schneider Williams said. “And the people around you are unable to rationalize with you and bring you back into what is actually real. So it’s incredibly scary for everyone around someone who’s deluded as well as the deluded person.

“As a caregiver, you feel incredibly powerless when you realize, ‘Oh my gosh, nothing I say or do anymore can bring him back to what’s real.’ And that’s a very scary place,” she said. “Lewy body – it really takes over.”

Williams was stressed by work, his sudden forgetfulness and changing personality, and insufficient sleep – which progressed to severe insomnia that removed the separation between day and night in the couple’s home. “Our house was like ‘Night at the Museum’ at night,” Schneider Williams said. Pulling him back from nighttime delusions would take hours, sometimes days, she added. “Imagined fear on fire – that is what it is.”

Hallucinations are “a key hallmark of LBD that can really help in identifying the disease,” Schneider Williams said, but also a tough symptom many LBD patients don’t want to discuss. She didn’t know about her husband’s hallucinations until her conversation with a medical professional who had reviewed his medical records. A delusion involves a storyline with people who can deconstruct it for you – but a hallucination is something only you see and therefore is easier to hide.

“Lewy body is neurological; it’s a circuitry problem. So the chemical and structural changes happening in Robin’s brain were responsible for the psychiatric symptoms that he was experiencing,” Schneider Williams said at Life Itself. Those included depression.

The doctors Schneider Williams met with after learning of his diagnosis “indicated his was one of the worst pathologies they had seen. He had about 40% loss of dopamine neurons,” she wrote in her 2016 article “The terrorist inside my husband’s brain” for the journal Neurology. “The massive proliferation of Lewy bodies throughout his brain had done so much damage to neurons and neurotransmitters that in effect, you could say he had chemical warfare in his brain.”

Shutterstock

Is my senior moment the start of dementia?

Antipsychotic medications were dangerous for him and made some symptoms worse, as they do for some LBD patients, Schneider Williams said.

If people experiencing neurodegeneration can still do some routines such as work or walk their dog, those “usual, well-worn pathways can provide comfort,” Schneider Williams said. When people can no longer do those things, symptoms can worsen and lead to devastating feelings of isolation.

Nearly eight years after the diagnosis that catalyzed Schneider Williams’ research journey, she is “just now starting to really pick up the pieces of my own life,” she said.

“I kind of need to go underground for a while and relocate my inspiration and my true passion, which is art and painting,” Schneider Williams said. She plans for a portion of all her future print sales to go to LBD research, and she will stay in touch with efforts related to the documentaries and the Lewy Body Dementia Fund, where she remains lead chair.

Schneider Williams paints at her home in Marin, California, in 2019.

Richard Corman

As Schneider Williams widens her focus while leaving her door open for LBD advocacy, experts continue their research efforts.

“We’re always learning more and more about the disease, from the basic science studies looking at cells and test tubes, to animal models, to human observational studies,” said Dr. James Galvin, a professor of neurology and director of the Comprehensive Center for Brain Health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Recent highlights include the introduction of at least two new diagnostics, Galvin said: a spinal fluid test from the company Amprion and a skin biopsy test from CND Life Sciences. The spinal fluid test tracks misfolded synuclein and helps doctors diagnose brain diseases, including LBD. The skin biopsy test aims to help doctors distinguish between serious neurologic disorders.

“To have diagnostics – that can confirm in life that someone has Lewy body disease – goes a long way both toward confirming the diagnosis and advancing research,” Galvin said. “The earlier you can start people on treatments, the easier to enroll people in clinical trials to test new medications. ”

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Galvin and the company Cognition Therapeutics a $29 million grant for studying whether a new drug, CT1812, is safe and effective for patients with LBD.

To treat LBD, doctors “borrow medicines from Alzheimer’s to treat cognitive symptoms, from Parkinson’s to treat motor symptoms, from narcolepsy to treat attention deficits and from psychiatry to treat behavioral symptoms,” Galvin said in a news release. CT1812 could help the brains of LBD patients clear toxic proteins and protect against functional loss.

NEW YORK - APRIL 27: (US TABLOIDS OUT) Actor Robin Williams appears onstage during MTV's Total Request Live at the MTV Times Square Studios on April 27, 2006 in New York City. (Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)

Peter Kramer/Getty Images

Robin Williams: His advice still matters

“When I wrote that editorial ‘The terrorist inside my husband’s brain,’ I was convinced that a diagnosis wouldn’t matter anyway, because there is no cure,” Schneider Williams said at Life Itself. “But my thinking since then has completely changed. Diagnosis is everything – not just for the patients and caregivers, but for the doctors, clinicians and researchers. If we had an accurate diagnosis, we could have sought specialized care.”

The Lewy Body Dementia Association has formed a Research Centers of Excellence Program, with 22 sites across the United States, to collaborate on clinical trials, assess needs for resources and infrastructure, and develop better measures of clinical symptoms, said Angela Taylor, the association’s interim executive director.

“We can’t undo changes that have already occurred,” said Dr. Samantha Holden, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Colorado and director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital. “But if we catch people early enough, can we prevent it from progressing?”

Research progress is being made in baby steps. When asked whether there has ever been a point when she felt like giving up, Schneider Williams said, “Oh, my God. Pick a day.”

“It’s very overwhelming when you look at all the millions and bazillions of dollars that are spent on research and you think, ‘Oh my God, have we really progressed at all?’ ” she added. But with how complex LBD is, “every yard gained matters.”

“Whoever has hope has many days of feeling the darkness,” Schneider Williams said. “But the thing about hope is that no matter what, you dust yourself off, you pick yourself up and you go forward. And you don’t do that alone.”

How Did Robin Williams Die? Inside The Actor's Tragic Suicide

By Marco Margaritoff | Checked By Jaclyn Anglis

Published September 7, 2021

After Robin Williams died by suicide in his California home on August 11, 2014, an autopsy revealed that he had Lewy body dementia.

Peter Kramer/Getty ImagesFans were shocked when they learned about how Robin Williams died — and the disease that led up to his death.

On August 11, 2014, Robin Williams was found dead in his home in Paradise Cay, California. The actor was discovered with a belt around his neck, and investigators later found cuts on his left wrist. Tragically, it was soon confirmed that Robin Williams died by suicide at the age of 63.

Up until that point, Williams had spent nearly his whole life making people laugh. A talented comedian and Academy Award-winning actor, he was highly respected among his peers and cherished by his millions of fans.

But despite his happy-go-lucky persona, Robin Williams struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction early on in his career. And later on in his life, he would grapple with mental health issues and physical ailments.

Still, many of his family members, friends, and fans were stunned by his sudden demise — and desperate for answers. How did Robin Williams die? Why did Robin Williams take his life? Tragic truths would soon emerge.

Inside The Troubled Life Of America’s Most Beloved Comedian

Sonia Moskowitz/Images/Getty ImagesRobin Williams’ career spanned about 40 years and earned him millions of fans around the world.

Robin Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 21, 1951. The son of an executive for the Ford Motor Company and a former fashion model, Williams was eager to entertain at an early age. From family members to classmates, the future comedian simply wanted to make everyone laugh.

When he was a teenager, his family relocated to California. Williams would go on to attend Claremont Men’s College and College of Marin before briefly moving to New York City to attend Juilliard School.

Robin Williams soon went back to California to give the comedy world a try — and created a popular stand-up act in the 1970s. Around the same time, he started appearing in numerous TV shows like Mork & Mindy.

But it was in 1980 that Williams would make his big-screen debut in the movie Popeye as the titular character. From there, he starred in a number of successful films, including Good Morning Vietnam and Dead Poets Society. All the while, he continued to wow people with his comedic skills.

For decades, Robin Williams lit up the big screen with his smile. But under the surface, he struggled with personal demons. In the 1970s and ’80s, Williams developed an addiction to cocaine. He only quit when his friend John Belushi died of an overdose — after partying with him the night before.

Though he never touched cocaine again after Belushi’s death, he began to drink heavily in the early 2000s, which led to him spending time in rehab. All the while, Williams also battled depression. Despite the ongoing success in his professional life, his personal life was full of ups and downs.

Still, it seemed like Williams could bounce back from any setback. And by the early 2010s, it looked like his darkest days were far behind him. But then, he received a heartbreaking diagnosis from his doctor.

How Did Robin Williams Die?

InstagramOn July 21, 2014, Robin Williams posted this photo on Instagram to celebrate his 63rd birthday. It was the last picture he’d ever share with his fans before his tragic death.

Three months before his death in 2014, Robin Williams was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He shared the news with his wife Susan Schneider Williams and his three children (from his two previous marriages). However, he wasn’t ready to share the diagnosis with the public quite yet, so his loved ones agreed to keep his condition private for the time being.

But in the meantime, Robin Williams struggled to understand why he was feeling paranoid, anxious, and depressed. He didn’t feel like the Parkinson’s diagnosis adequately explained those issues. So he and his wife planned to go to a neurocognitive testing facility to see if there was something else going on. But tragically, he would never make it there.

On the night before his death, Robin Williams seemed like he was in a peaceful mood. As Susan Schneider Williams later explained, he was busy with an iPad and appeared to be “getting better.” The last time Susan saw her husband alive was around 10:30 p.m., just before she went to sleep.

His last words that he said to her that night were: “Goodnight, my love… goodnight, goodnight.” At some point after that, he relocated to a different bedroom in the home, where he would breathe his last.

On August 11, 2014, Robin Williams was found dead by his personal assistant at 11:45 a.m. At that point, his wife had left the house, thinking that her husband was asleep. But his assistant decided to pick the lock on the door.

Inside, Robin Williams had clearly died by suicide. Discovered in a seated position on the floor, he had used a belt to hang himself, with one end tied around his neck and the other end secured between a closet door and door frame in the bedroom. Police later noticed superficial cuts on his left wrist.

On a nearby chair, investigators found Williams’ iPad (which did not contain any information related to suicide or suicidal ideation), two different kinds of antidepressants, and a pocketknife with his blood on it — which he had apparently used to cut his wrist. Since he was clearly already gone, no efforts were made to revive him, and he was declared dead at 12:02 p.m.

There were no signs of foul play at the scene, and the only drugs in Williams’ system were caffeine, prescribed antidepressants, and levodopa — a medication used to treat Parkinson’s disease. An autopsy later confirmed that Robin Williams’ cause of death was suicide by asphyxia due to hanging.

His loved ones and fans were devastated when they learned how Robin Williams died. Meanwhile, his publicist put out a statement that he had been struggling with “severe depression” in recent times. So, many assumed that this was the main reason why Robin Williams took his life.

But only his autopsy would reveal the true culprit of his anguish. As it turned out, Williams had been misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s and had a different disease — which remains largely misunderstood to this day.

What Disease Did Robin Williams Have?

Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic/Getty ImagesRobin Williams with his wife Susan Schneider Williams in 2012.

According to his autopsy report, Robin Williams was suffering from Lewy body dementia — a devastating and debilitating brain disease that shares characteristics with both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

The “Lewy bodies” refer to abnormal clumps of protein that gather in the patient’s brain cells and essentially infiltrate the brain. It’s believed that these clumps are responsible for up to 15 percent of all dementia cases.

The disease heavily impacts sleep, behavior, movement, cognition, and control of one’s own body. And it had certainly taken a toll on Williams.

Still, doctors say he put up an impressive fight despite the difficulties. “People who have great brains, who are incredibly brilliant, can tolerate degenerative disease better than someone who is average,” said Dr. Bruce Miller, an expert familiar with Williams’ case. “Robin Williams was a genius.”

But tragically, no one knew which disease Robin Williams had until after his death. This meant that an incredibly brilliant man was suffering from something that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend — which explained why he was so frustrated when it came to investigating his own symptoms.

And although Robin Williams was due to visit a neurocognitive testing facility, his widow believes that the upcoming appointment may have stressed him out even more in the days before he would take his own life.

“I think he didn’t want to go,” Susan Schneider Williams said. “I think he thought: ‘I’m going to get locked up and never come out.'”

Why Did Robin Williams Take His Life?

While Robin Williams had struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism in the past, he had been clean and sober for eight years before he died.

So for his widow, rumors that her husband had relapsed into his old habits again before his death made her feel angry and frustrated.

As Susan Schneider Williams later explained, “It infuriated me when the media said he’d been drinking, because I know there are recovering addicts out there who looked up to him, people dealing with depression who looked up to him, and they deserve to know the truth.”

As for the claims that Robin Williams took his life because he was suffering from depression, she said, “It was not depression that killed Robin. Depression was one of let’s call it 50 symptoms and it was a small one.”

After doing more research on Lewy body dementia and speaking to numerous doctors, Susan Schneider Williams attributed her beloved husband’s suicide to the horrific disease that he didn’t even know he had.

Medical experts agree. “Lewy body dementia is a devastating illness. It’s a killer. It is fast, it’s progressive,” said Dr. Miller, who works as the director of Memory and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco. “This was about as devastating a form of Lewy body dementia as I had ever seen. It really amazed me that Robin could walk or move at all.”

While Robin Williams sadly never learned what disease he was suffering from, his widow felt a sense of relief that she could at least put a name to it. Since then, she has made it her mission to learn as much as she can about the illness, to educate others who may be unfamiliar, and to correct any inaccurate assumptions about what caused her husband’s death.

She and the rest of his family are also doing their part to make sure that Robin Williams’ memory lives on for years after his death. And there’s no question that this beloved star will never be forgotten.

After learning about Robin Williams’ death, read about Anthony Bourdain’s tragic demise. Then, take a look at the sudden death of Chris Cornell.

Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams died five years ago

August 11, 2019, 10:54 am Culture

100%

Acclaimed comedian and Academy Award winner Robin Williams passed away five years ago on August 11, 2014. According to the decision of experts, the cause of death of the 63-year-old actor was suicide.

On August 11, 2014, American actor Robin Williams was found dead at his home in Tiburon. The day after the tragedy, experts conducted a check and decided that the cause of death of the 63-year-old artist was suicide.

The death of the actor was pronounced at 00:02, and at that time his wife Susan Schneider was in the house. In the morning, she thought that Williams was sleeping in her room, and calmly went about her business. This was stated during a press conference by a police spokesman for Marin County, California, Keith Boyd.

Later, Williams' wife confessed that he experienced pathological anxiety, was depressed for a long time and suffered from early Parkinson's disease, but kept it from the public. She categorically rejected the version circulated in the press about Williams' abuse of alcohol and drugs. According to Schneider, "Other than three children, Williams' greatest legacy is the joy and happiness he brought to other people, especially those who faced personal challenges."

According to Williams' close friend, humorist Rob Schneider, shortly before his death, the actor began taking a new drug for Parkinson's disease. According to the media, a month before his death, due to problems with alcohol and drugs, Williams was undergoing a "sobriety maintenance" program at a rehabilitation center. The actor's representative spoke about his struggle with severe depression, but did not confirm the version of suicide.

The actor's wife stated that she very much hoped that the focus of the public's attention would not be on the circumstances of the actor's death, but on "those countless moments of joy and laughter that he gave to millions." It was on them that US President Barack Obama stopped, expressing his condolences to Williams' family.

“He was a pilot, a doctor, a genie, a nurse, a president, a professor, a restless Peter Pan, and a little bit of everything. But he was one of a kind,” Obama said.

Williams' filmography includes more than a hundred diverse paintings. He made his film debut as the brave sailor Popeye in Robert Altman's film of the same name, received his first Oscar nomination since Good Morning Vietnam , played in Jumanji and Mrs Doubtfire .

Williams has three Academy Award nominations and won one statuette for his supporting role in Good Will Hunting . During his career, he has collected about 70 nominations and more than 50 awards, including five Golden Globes and two Primetime Emmys.

In 1997, Entertainment Weekly named Williams the "funniest person" for the first time for his many stand-up comedian appearances. In this role of the Oscar-winning actor, something that cannot be shown on the screen was manifested. For Williams, there were no forbidden topics: in the stream of his jokes there were sketches about oral sex and George W. Bush. He was not modest about his own talent, and even joked about his own death.

“When I die, dance on my grave and water the flowers with whatever you drink. Do whatever you want, just don’t clone me, because the clone will never be like me, ”said the comedian, nicknamed in society “the person who can make furniture laugh.”

Having lived to a mature age, Williams did not stop acting, riding a bicycle in his native San Francisco and raising children, whom he called the meaning of his life. After the actor's death, his son Zach Williams honored his late father by naming his newborn son after the famous comedian. The child was named Maclaurin Clement Williams - Maclaurin was the second name of the actor.

Subscribe to Gazeta.Ru in News, Zen and Telegram.
To report a bug, select the text and press Ctrl+Enter

News

Zen

Picture of the day

Russian military operation in Ukraine. Day 281st

Live broadcast of the military special operation in Ukraine — Day 281

08:23

The verdict was announced for six days. Billionaires Magomedovs sent to strict regime colony

The court sentenced Magomedov, the owner of Summa, to 19 years in a penal colony

17:09

Six parcels of explosives in two days. Assassination attempts on politicians and military are being investigated in Spain

An envelope with explosives was received at the US Embassy in Spain