Robin Williams' widow says it wasn't depression that led actor to take his life

Susan Williams said she does not blame her late husband for taking his own life 'one bit,' and called him 'the bravest man I’ve ever known'

Susan Williams said medical afflictions would have claimed her husband's life within three years (AP)

Robin Williams’ widow has said that his medical afflictions would have claimed his life within three “hard years” and that she does not blame him for his suicide. She said he was suffering from a rare form of dementia that my have caused him to suffer from a lack of reason.

Fifteen months after the actor took his life, Susan Schneider Williams told US media she laid the blame for her husband taking his life not on depression but on diffuseLewy body dementia.

In interviews with People magazine and with ABC News, she said: "It was not depression that killed Robin. Depression was one of let’s call it 50 symptoms and it was a small one.”

She added: “This was a very unique case and I pray to God that it will shed some light on Lewy bodies for the millions of people and their loved ones who are suffering with it. Because we didn’t know. He didn’t know.”

Susan Williams said the actor and comedian had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive movement disorder, only a few months before his death, but that a coroner’s report found signs of Lewy body dementia, a difficult-to-diagnose condition that afflicts 1.4 million people worldwide and leads to a decline in thinking and reasoning abilities.

That may have contributed to the anxiety and depression for which he was treated in his final months, and probably played a role in his suicide by hanging, aged 63, in August 2014.

Although there were many reasons he ended his life, she said, it may have all come down to one: “I think he was just saying ‘No’. And I don’t blame him one bit.” She called him “the bravest man I’ve ever known”.

Williams starred in classic films such as Mrs Doubtfire, Good Morning Vietnam and Disney’s Aladdin. He won an Oscar for his supporting role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting, which included a powerful speech delivered from a bench in a Boston park where fans this year marked the first anniversary of his death.

The actor’s symptoms began in November 2013, she said in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America. They included stomach pain, constipation, urinary trouble and sleeplessness. By the following May, he was suffering from stiffness, slumping, a shuffling gait and “losing his ability in his voice,” she said.

In what would be the final week of his life, doctors were planning to send him to a facility for neuro-cognitive testing. But in that period he was “disintegrating before my eyes,” she said.

Williams, who had battled substance addiction in the past, was clean and sober when he died, she said, having recently marked eight years of sobriety. The couple had been together for seven years and had been wed for three years. She described her husband as “just a dream” and their relationship “the best love I ever dreamed of”.