Robin Williams had Lewy Body Dementia

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I received lots of texts and emails today on the latest in the Robin Williams – Lewy Body Dementia story.

His widow was interviewed today and indicates that LBD, not depression, killed her husband.

Here’s an excerpt from a Washington Post article about the interview news anchor Amy Robach did this morning with Susan Schneider Williams:

Robach explained that Robin Williams’s autopsy revealed he was suffering from Lewy body dementia, a debilitating brain disorder. “Most people think your husband killed himself because he was depressed,” Robach said. “No, Lewy body dementia killed Robin,” Susan Williams said. “It’s what took his life. And that’s what I’ve spent the last year trying to get to the bottom of: what took my husband’s life.” The week of his death, Williams, 63, was scheduled to go to a facility for neurocognitive testing. But the dementia, combined with the Parkinson’s diagnosis, was causing him serious, unmanageable pain.

 
And here’s an excerpt from a New York Times article:

In the early stages, many people with the disease are aware of all these changes — and of their prognosis. The decline is steady, steeper than the average 10 percent drop a year in tests of cognitive function seen in Alzheimer’s; and there is no cure. Mr. Williams may have been both aware, and strong enough to act to avoid his fate. “If you’re young, if you have insight into what’s happening, and you have some of the associated symptoms–like depression, and the hallucinations,” said Dr. Edward Huey, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at Columbia. “That’s when we think the risk of suicide is highest.”

 
Robin Williams had not been diagnosed with LBD while alive.  It was only diagnosed after a brain autopsy was performed.

I’ll copy below the links to the two newspaper articles referred to above.

Robin