Robin Williams' dementia diagnosis: When the actor's wife, Susan Williams, revealed his battle, "It was not depression that killed.."
Robin Williams
, the 'Dead Poets Society' actor, took his own life, leaving millions of fans grieving with the sudden, unfortunate incident. The audience perceived his reason to be depression; however, the study revealed that the real cause was a debilitating brain disease called Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB).
Robin Williams and his disease
'It was not depression that killed Robin,' the actor's wife, Susan Williams, said in a 2015 interview with People, before adding, 'Depression was one of let's call it 50 symptoms, and it was a small one.' Talking about the symptoms, she said that they present themselves like a 'Whack-a-ball' machine that one wouldn't know what they were looking at.
About Dementia with Lewy Bodies
DLB, the frequently misdiagnosed disease, is the second most common neurodegenerative dementia after Alzheimer's, causing fluctuations in mental status, hallucinations, and impairment of motor function.
A year prior to Williams' death, the disease started taking a toll on him, which included heightened levels of anxiety, delusions, and impaired movement. The symptoms worsened, with him experiencing crippling anxiety attacks that were miscalculated, leaving his head bloodied and muscles rigid.
The doctors couldn't figure out what had been wrong with the actor's condition until the autopsy.
Moreover, Susan Schneider Williams revealed that the actor had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease a few months before he passed away – which really was just the tip of the iceberg.
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Revealing that the actor has undergone multiple tests to identify the problem that resulted in negative, Williams said, 'None of the doctors knew that there was this ghost disease underlying all of this,' according to CNN.
The symptoms suffered by Robin Williams
Williams further said that DLB/LBD has more than 40 symptoms that can randomly appear and disappear. For the actor, it all began in 2012 when he pulled himself back from engaging with his theatre group in California. With anxiety, paranoia was another significant symptom, and by the end, he had hallucinations as well.
'Whoever has hope has many days of feeling the darkness, 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,' she concluded.
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