Robin Williams: Depression Alone Rarely Causes Suicide

norm

see, i knew something wasn't right with his original post...hank's a good dude

brianlux

norm said:

see, i knew something wasn't right with his original post...hank's a good dude

I got where Henry was coming from in his original article and sent him an email telling him the same story I wrote on page 2 here. He wrote back and basically said the gist of what he said was that suicide sucks and he wishes people would not make that choice. The responses he got obviously led him to seeing that his choice of words hurt a lot of people and for him to have the balls to publicly apologize speaks of the quality of the man's mind and heart.
You're right, Norm, he's one good dude! :-)

hedonist

When someone negates their existence, they cancel themselves out in my mind. I have many records, books and films featuring people who have taken their own lives, and I regard them all with a bit of distain. When someone commits this act, he or she is out of my analog world. I know they existed, yet they have nullified their existence because they willfully removed themselves from life. They were real but now they are not.

I no longer take this person seriously. I may be able to appreciate what he or she did artistically but it’s impossible to feel bad for them. Their life wasn’t cut short — it was purposely abandoned. It’s hard to feel bad when the person did what they wanted to. It sucks they are gone, of course, but it’s the decision they made. I have to respect it and move on.

This is mostly what I took issue with. I appreciate his not backtracking but being obviously genuinely sorry for how his views were received.

chadwick

ever wonder if robin had schizophrenia? i have wondered this for years. i have a neighbor with schizophrenia & i've known others with this mental disorder/disease. ever see a schizophrenic person so drugged up on meds they are walking zombies. robin w. would not be robin w. with a system full of medications. fuck that

schizophenia, bipolar, depression, drug & alcohol addiction/issues.... this is a train wreck
this is my neighbor down the way & a guy or two i knew many years ago & could have been robin w.

how much sleep did robin normaly need?
were his disorders episodic or more constant?
roller coaster bullshit - extremely happy/ suddenly extremely sad?
he seems very adhd/add to me anyway (ever been a drug user & or boozer when having adhd/add or any other ? fuck.shit. piss..#$%^&*()(*&^%$#$%^& zing fart zang_)(*&^%$#@#$%^ dong*^89 ding ) mental disorder)

a lot to this stuff

norm

brianlux said:

norm said:

see, i knew something wasn't right with his original post...hank's a good dude

I got where Henry was coming from in his original article and sent him an email telling him the same story I wrote on page 2 here. He wrote back and basically said the gist of what he said was that suicide sucks and he wishes people would not make that choice. The responses he got obviously led him to seeing that his choice of words hurt a lot of people and for him to have the balls to publicly apologize speaks of the quality of the man's mind and heart.
You're right, Norm, he's one good dude! :-)

and it's his apology that separates him from somebody like gene simmons who pr person wrote his apology...at least henry has the balls to answer his fans directly

brianlux

hedonist said:

When someone negates their existence, they cancel themselves out in my mind. I have many records, books and films featuring people who have taken their own lives, and I regard them all with a bit of distain. When someone commits this act, he or she is out of my analog world. I know they existed, yet they have nullified their existence because they willfully removed themselves from life. They were real but now they are not.

I no longer take this person seriously. I may be able to appreciate what he or she did artistically but it’s impossible to feel bad for them. Their life wasn’t cut short — it was purposely abandoned. It’s hard to feel bad when the person did what they wanted to. It sucks they are gone, of course, but it’s the decision they made. I have to respect it and move on.

This is mostly what I took issue with. I appreciate his not backtracking but being obviously genuinely sorry for how his views were received.

My sense is that Henry was writing from the gut in his original article and his feeling of anger at, as he said in his apology, the thing that led the person to killing them self, not the person, is what came out loudest. When I read the article, I could relate to how he felt. I can maybe even understand some unhappiness toward the person as I am unhappy with myself for having made that choice years ago (and lucky to have survived). I can even understand how, as a response to the disappointment of losing that person in the world, someone could feel put off from the work of someone who takes their life. Not that I feel that way, but I can see where someone would.

And haven't we all or at least most of us said things in the heat of strong feelings and later on thought- "well, I could have said that better"? I know I have. The diff, of course, is that most of us don't write to as large an audience as someone like Rollins and later have to take the kind of heat he did for his choice of words. In any case, to so openly and thoroughly apologize- not just some little obligatory tweet- is the mark of a good man who truly cares about how his words affect others.

hedonist

Makes sense, and your last part - absolutely. As I said, I appreciate his subsequent words - they were eloquent and honest and I think quite sincere. Helped to bring clarity to what he initially wrote.

(and, "took issue" - past tense )

callen

Agree with Rollins, he fucked his kids.

Also If your doing coke your an idiot.

callen

backseatLover12 said:

norm said:

Robin Williams didn’t die from suicide. I only just heard the sad, sad news of Robin Williams’s death. My wife sent me a message to tell me he had died, and, when I asked her what he died from, she told me something that nobody in the news seems to be talking about.

When people die from cancer, their cause of death can be various horrible things – seizure, stroke, pneumonia – and when someone dies after battling cancer, and people ask “How did they die?”, you never hear anyone say “pulmonary embolism”, the answer is always “cancer”. A Pulmonary Embolism can be the final cause of death with some cancers, but when a friend of mine died from cancer, he died from cancer. That was it. And when I asked my wife what Robin Williams died from, she, very wisely, replied “Depression”.

The word “suicide” gives many people the impression that “it was his own decision,” or “he chose to die, whereas most people with cancer fight to live.” And, because Depression is still such a misunderstood condition, you can hardly blame people for not really understanding. Just a quick search on Twitter will show how many people have little sympathy for those who commit suicide…

@TateLovett thank u for being right. I love robin Williams but I think the way he died was his own stupidity. It’s sad but his own fault. — Kara Seymour (@kara_michelle01) August 12, 2014

Idk why everyone is so sympathetic towards Robin Williams. Yea he was a good actor and all but the dude killed himself. His own damn fault — Darnell (@Thathigga) August 12, 2014

Robin Williams dieing is sad but it was his choice What about the 1000′s of children dieing in Palestine that dont want to die thats sad too — TerryCrosbie (@Terry_Crosbie) August 12, 2014

But, just as a Pulmonary Embolism is a fatal symptom of cancer, suicide is a fatal symptom of Depression. Depression is an illness, not a choice of lifestyle. You can’t just “cheer up” with depression, just as you can’t choose not to have cancer. When someone commits suicide as a result of Depression, they die from Depression – an illness that kills millions each year. It is hard to know exactly how many people actually die from Depression each year because the figures and statistics only seem to show how many people die from “suicide” each year (and you don’t necessarily have to suffer Depression to commit suicide, it’s usually just implied). But considering that one person commits suicide every 14 minutes in the US alone, we clearly need to do more to battle this illness, and the stigmas that continue to surround it. Perhaps Depression might lose some its “it was his own fault” stigma,if we start focussing on the illness, rather than the symptom. Robin Williams didn’t die from suicide. He died from Depression*. It wasn’t his choice to suffer that.
http://www.tomclempson.com/2014/08/robin-williams-did-not-die-from-suicide/

I hear you Norm. Perhaps rather than argue whether it's a choice or not, we could discuss ways we can help those we care about who are depressed. That's what is being missed in this opinion piece except for the bold part. Although we may continue to disagree about it being a choice, can we agree that there are ways to help these people rather than let them succumb to death by their own hand?

Dudes a grown fkn man. He's responsible for his actions.

JWPearl

I knew ''They'' were going to be brought up..

hedonist

Wait - who are "they"?

JWPearl

''They'' are the children...

callen

JWPearl said:

''They'' are the children...

Ah Rollins first point. The thread brought them up. And it's pretty fucked to kill oneself when you created offspring.

hedonist

It IS pretty fucked. I'd imagine he felt he could do nothing else.

I don't know, but I sure feel for him, where he was (and his children).

Anyway, don't think I want to take part in the angry side of this, this evening.

JWPearl

Yes thats all I was going to say, is I knew they were going to be brought up...

callen

JWPearl said:

Yes thats all I was going to say, is I knew they were going to be brought up...

Again the thread topic is article by Rollins and his first point was Williams should not have committed suicide due to affects on his children. So I didn't bring it up.

hedonist

I think it was an article by someone else without mention of children unless I misread the initial post.

Anyway, moot in the end.

callen

hedonist said:

I think it was an article by someone else without mention of children unless I misread the initial post.

Anyway, moot in the end.

Stand corrected. Posted on wrong thread.

backseatLover12

Holy 5,555 post count Hedonist!

backseatLover12

chadwick said:

ever wonder if robin had schizophrenia? i have wondered this for years. i have a neighbor with schizophrenia & i've known others with this mental disorder/disease. ever see a schizophrenic person so drugged up on meds they are walking zombies. robin w. would not be robin w. with a system full of medications. fuck that

schizophenia, bipolar, depression, drug & alcohol addiction/issues.... this is a train wreck
this is my neighbor down the way & a guy or two i knew many years ago & could have been robin w.

how much sleep did robin normaly need?
were his disorders episodic or more constant?
roller coaster bullshit - extremely happy/ suddenly extremely sad?
he seems very adhd/add to me anyway (ever been a drug user & or boozer when having adhd/add or any other ? fuck.shit. piss..#$%^&*()(*&^%$#$%^& zing fart zang_)(*&^%$#@#$%^ dong*^89 ding ) mental disorder)

a lot to this stuff

I always thought he was manic / schizophrenia and most likely a hell of a lot of energy to be in the presence of. No doubt that kind of person counters it with severe lows to counter the severe highs...

It makes you worry about them people like that...

And it's cool that Henry apologized, but as any written piece that's brutally honest, people tend to single out what they're offended by and focus on just that (not picking on anyone particularly here though, just a group psychology observation).