A reality beyond fame…

Robin Williams, the talented American actor and comedian died on August 11, 2014 as a result of asphyxia by hanging, successfully completing a final suicide attempt. In one of his stellar performances in the film “Dead Poets Society”, Williams plays an idealistic professor who is going to teach students, one of his most popular films, Williams becomes a doctor who he uses unconventional medical interventions to remind his colleagues of the virtues of the Hippocratic oath and to help his patients find faith and hope when death threatens. But life has its indecipherable designs and Williams himself, in his role in real life, as a patient trapped by a debilitating disease, associated with constant stress and anxiety led him to an outcome where he finally could not overcome depression.

As Peza said in said poem: “…How many there are who, tired of life, sick with sorrow, dead of tedium, make people laugh like the suicidal actor, without finding a remedy for their illness…”

Robin Williams died after fighting for many years against a severe depressive illness, drug addiction and alcohol abuse, these disorders carried without seeking adequate psychological help for long periods of time. This unfortunate combination gradually eroded his emotional strength over the years and contributed to the deterioration of his physical health. Rich, smart, famous, and extremely talented, Williams seemed to have it all. The inevitable question is: How is it possible that Robin Williams, with everything he possessed, tangible and intangible, chose to descend to the most remote places of the mind to find solutions to his problems and finally made the decision to commit suicide? Robin Williams was unique as an actor and comedian but as a human being he was like the rest of us, vulnerable and fragile in the face of mental illness. He almost perfectly fits the profile of someone at high risk of suicide. Caucasian male, past middle age, nearing the end of a successful career, with health problems (Parkinson, 2014 and S/P Aortic valve surgery, 2009), with severe chronic depression, with a history of drug abuse drugs and alcohol, recently graduated from a rehab program, and going through a difficult professional period. Williams’s suicide has somewhat illuminated the deepest, darkest nooks and crannies of the mind afflicted with depression and eaten away by drugs and alcohol. Regarding suicide, in the US in 2011, 39,518 people took their own lives. 60% of those who commit suicide suffer from depression. Suicide is the fourth (4th) leading cause of death in the US. 90% of people who commit suicide are associated with a diagnosis of psychiatric illness.