Two years after Academy Award winner Robin Williams died, his wife reveals what drove him to take his own life.
Susan Schneider Williams, in a personal essay titled “The terrorist inside my husband’s brain”, writes, the 63-year-old actor was suffering was LBD (Lewy Body Dementia).
LBD damages brain cells over time, leading to memory loss, delusions, hallucinations, Parkinson’s symptoms and other health problems.
The essay was published Tuesday by medical journal ‘Neurology’.
The symptoms began in October 2013, the month of their second wedding anniversary.
Over the next 10 months, Robin Williams struggled with paranoia, delusions, insomnia, among about 40 such effects, so much so he struggled to remember even one line, his wife wrote.
“I just want to reboot my brain,” she recalled her husband saying.
“…At times, he would find himself stuck in a frozen stance, unable to move, and frustrated when he came out of it. He was beginning to have trouble with visual and spatial abilities in the way of judging distance and depth. His loss of basic reasoning just added to his growing confusion.”
The couple had been married for three years when Williams hanged himself at their home in Tiburon, California on August 11, 2014.