RIP Robin Williams

[Neil]

What a real shame. The man did so much, but clearly his funny side was balanced by other demons which finally were too much for him :( - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28749702


US actor and comedian Robin Williams has been found dead, aged 63, in an apparent suicide.

Marin County Police in California said he was pronounced dead at his home shortly after officials responded to an emergency call around noon local time.

Williams was famous for such films as Good Morning Vietnam and Dead Poets Society and won an Oscar for his role in Good Will Hunting.

His publicist said he had been "battling severe depression".

In the past he had talked, and even joked, about his struggles with alcohol and drugs.

Williams had recently returned to a rehabilitation centre to "fine-tune" his sobriety, the Los Angeles Times reported in July.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120229105230/disney/images/4/4d/Robin_Williams.jpg

[Geordie9]

What an absolute shame. Couldn't believe it when i heard it. RIP.

[Neil]

Very upset about this! I can't imagine the mindset you have to be in to think suicide is the only answer :(





http://www.businessinsider.com/robin-williams-made-christopher-reeve-laugh-after-paralysis-2014-8


And at that moment, Reeve started to laugh. He later told Walters, "I knew then: if I could laugh, I could live."

[Geordie9]

Aye i know, he seemed happy and hyper about life but obviously it was all too much for him, he will go down as one of hollywoods greatest!!

[AcesandEights]

It's a shame, but not surprising. I couldn't help but always wonder if those manic upswings had equally dark downturns.

[Publius]

It's a shame, but not surprising. I couldn't help but always wonder if those manic upswings had equally dark downturns.
Apparently so. I think there's a lot of his material that I won't be able to find funny again. Very, very sad.

[Neil]

FFS! hanged himself - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28761553

It's a strange way to choose to go you'd think? But then an old work colleague of mine, who suffered from serious depression, took the same route! Went for a walk into a nearby park/wood and just hanged himself :(

[bassman]

Apparently he hung himself while seated in a chair? I'm not sure I understand that one too well....

I'm surprised Williams lasted as long as he did considering his severe addictions to coke and alcohol. Before I knew it was suicide my first thought was "shame, but no surprise there".

[Neil]

Did he really kill himself due to money worries (+ fueled by depression)? Can't believe after his resume he's not got plenty of money in the bank?

[bassman]

Did he really kill himself due to money worries (+ fueled by depression)? Can't believe after his resume he's not got plenty of money in the bank?

I hadn't heard anything about money worries. From what I've gathered, it was depression because he just couldn't stop abusing drugs and alcohol. I think it was mostly alcohol at that last stage of his life.

I have a dvd of his stand up from roughly ten years ago where he was cracking jokes about having to have critical surgery done on his heart due to his years of abuse. He seemed to be able to laugh about it as if those days were behind him. It's a shame he was given a new lease on life and then threw it all away, but I suppose that's the worst thing about addiction, it can always return. Sometimes with a vengeance....

[Neil]

Vz-K74MG6RU

[MoonSylver]

Depression is a killer. You have all these thoughts and feelings you can't even understand yourself, so we on the outside looking in on someone else will be completely baffled. Reading posts from his ex-wife & kids is just heartbreaking. They all talk, repeatedly & at great length, about how warm, kind, & gentle he was & how much he was loved. And still depression & addiction got him in the end. :(

There was a great article on NBC about suicide prevention, with the hope that Robin's death may at least help focus attention on this epidemic, with some truly alarming statistics:


...and yet suicide remains a largely silent epidemic, the rare top-10 cause of death that fails to inspire celebrity sing-alongs, bake-sales, and all-night telethons. Last year the Centers for Disease Control flagged self-harm as “an increasing public health concern.” But even with grabby data—like the fact that U.S. suicide deaths now outnumber deaths by automobile accident—the subject drifted off the op-ed pages and out of the public mind.

Williams’ death could change that fact. It’s a tight-focused tragedy, of course, but on Tuesday suicide researchers expressed hope that the case may bring broader attention to one of humankind’s oldest and most elusive killers. They see the potential for a much-needed public tipping point, a moment that pushes suicide awareness into the mainstream like AIDS after the death of Rock Hudson, or heroin after the overdose of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

“It would be nice to see the same thing happen for suicide,” said Matthew Nock, a Harvard professor of psychology and one of the world’s leading suicide researchers. “It’s a really big problem,” he added, but the funding for suicide research and prevention “just pales in comparison to cancer and AIDS, and all this other stuff because of the stigma associated with it.”

Part of the attention-gap lies in suicide’s deceptive toll on society. The suicide rate—the number of people per 100,000 who kill themselves each year—dropped in developed countries between 1990 and 2010, according to the University of Washington data. In the United States, meanwhile, the rate has jumped almost 20 percent in the last decade, according to the CDC. But take a longer view back to World War II and the American suicide rate has not changed much at all.

The alarming part, say researchers, is that suicide remains an untamed cause of death. Heart disease, cancer, HIV, most infectious diseases, almost every kind of accident: they’re all in relatively steep decline, while suicide floats along, or even rises. It’s among the only major threats to get significantly worse in this century than in the last. And the reason is darkly profound: as more people survive into middle and old age by the grace of modern medicine, more people are left to die by their own hand—starting with Williams’ own generation.

Williams, whose bright life was emblematic of the Baby Boomers, is leading them still in death. The suicide rate among Americans 45 to 64 has jumped more than 30 percent in the last decade, according to the CDC, and it’s possible to slice the data more finely than that. Among white, upper-middle-aged men, the rate has jumped by more than 50 percent, according to the public data. If these men were to create a breakaway territory, it would have the highest suicide rate in the world.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/robin-williams-death/deadly-stigma-robin-williams-suicide-exposes-silent-epidemic-n179206

[Neil]

He had the early stage of Parkinson's disease! Was this a contributing factor? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28796277