Blog - David Helkowski
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Robin Williams Lewy Bodies

The latest news, if we can call it that, that I've been seeing is that Robin Williams didn't kill himself. He died of Lewy Bodies.

I saw this and went "wtf are they talking about." I read about it. I read a bunch of comments.

I initially concluded "whatever," but on thinking a bit I realized a problem which I wish to address.

What seems to be making the rounds to me is this:

What is my issue with this? My issue is that we are supposed to think more highly of Robin Williams and dismiss his personal responsibility for murdering himself because "he wasn't responsible" while simultaneously essentially looking on others still worse because they don't have "the Lewy Bodies excuse."

I grant you that having your brain work improperly due to illness, disease, etc is terrible. I do not grant you that simply being clinically depressed is any less of a real problem deserving sympathy.

We should be sympathetic and pay attention when -anyone- is clinically depressed, way before they reach the point of killing themselves. We should support those who are suffering, regardless of the cause.

If people need help, we should help them. If people are hurting, we should care about it regardless of whether "they are to blame for their issues."

You see, the issue is that the story we already knew from the start is sufficient: "Robin Williams was clinically depressed and committed suicide." That's accurate regardless of why he was depressed. Those are facts. The moment we start in with revisionist history like "But he wasn't in a sound state of mind so he isn't really directly responsible for choosing to kill himself," that's problem territory because it is speculation.

We don't know precisely what he was thinking or why he did it, and it ultimately doesn't matter. We should feel bad that it happened to him, and we should do everything in our power to reasonably help the clinically depressed, and even help people before they get that far so they don't even reach the state of clinical depression.

Yes. Robin Williams killed himself. Sorry guys. Facts are facts. Water is wet.

I guess it's sort of interesting to know his brain was degrading, but I fail to see how that really changes how we should react to anything about his death.

Defending Robin Williams state of mind or lack thereof doesn't bring him back, and it doesn't help the people who are currently suffering from depression or other psychological states that are unpleasant and/or harming them.

I asked AI about all this.

It pointed me to the current main public source of the "he had severe Lewy Body dementia" as being his wife and this article by her.

I had AI review the article. OpenAI complained I was doing something I shouldn't when I asked it to analyze it.

I tried again, and AI confirmed for me that, essentially, she did not name doctors or give any proof. We have no real public evidence current to analyze to know the veracity/accuracy of her claims.

I think there is high chance that her memory and telling of what she heard is exaggerated from the actual reality. Additionally she isn't a neutral source for information on why her husband committed suicide. AI doesn't like me saying that but agrees that everyone seems to be basing their judgements of the whole thing on what his wife claimed that doctors told her.

Which is part of why I react badly to the sudden new popularity of "Lewy Bodies killed Robin" years after it all happened. It has all the hallmarks of people exaggerating details in order to get attention, and little to no useful purpose.

At least his wife had reason to draw attention to Lewy Bodies, to raise awareness and funds for treatment etc.

The people blabbering about this online currently? They don't seem to have any point besides acting like they've discovered something new about this, which they have not that I have seen.

Notice how quickly everyone, including me, starts inventing stories once the primary evidence is unavailable.