Robin Williams’ Case of Lewy Body Dementia Was ‘Unusually Severe’ as Autopsy Results Show a 40% Loss of Dopamine Neurons
In 2014, actor and comedian Robin Williams died while he was experiencing an uncommon brain condition. Williams’ brain was attacked by a condition doctors later defined as Lewy body dementia, one of the rarest but most deadly brain conditions. He received the LBD diagnosis months before his death.
Williams was one of the most renowned comedians of all time, with his improvisational skills setting him apart. The Illinois native kicked off his career in stand-up comedy before getting major roles in the late ’70s.
Robin Williams began experiencing symptoms in 2013
Williams’ widow, Susan Schneider, traced the condition’s onset to late October 2013. As she wrote for Neurology, Williams was seeing his doctor so he could treat unrelated symptoms. The comedian underwent many tests and scans to try and find out what his problem was and treat it.
Susan adds that her husband would later complain of “gut discomfort,” making him afraid and restless. This marked the beginning of escalating health issues for Williams.
Susan adds, “My husband was trapped in the twisted architecture of his neurons, and no matter what I did, I could not pull him out.” This went on for 10 months, but the doctors never diagnosed his condition.
Robin Williams’ symptoms escalated
Susan notes that since the onset of the problem, “problems with paranoia, delusions and looping, insomnia, memory, and high cortisol levels … were settling in hard.” Little help came from psychotherapy and subsequent medical interventions despite visiting the doctors frequently. The symptoms appeared randomly and had varying degrees of intensity, as Scientific American reports. All tests that were conducted returned negative.
The struggles increased as Williams filmed Night at the Museum 3 in April of 2014. The actor who filmed hundreds of lines in Bengal Tiger three years prior struggled to remember even a single line in his role as Teddy Roosevelt. Williams had a panic attack, and his doctor recommended antipsychotic medications. This “seemed to make things better in some ways, but far worse in others,” according to Susan.
Susan vividly recalls the constant shifts of her husband’s clarity. She wrote, “I experienced my brilliant husband being lucid with clear reasoning 1 minute and then, 5 minutes later, blank, lost in confusion.”
Williams was eventually diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in May 2014. However, despite Susan’s hopefulness, she wrote, “Somehow I knew Robin was not buying it.” Upon consultation with a neurologist, Williams was informed that he had neither Alzheimer’s nor was he schizophrenic.
During this experience, Williams encountered “nearly all of the 40-plus symptoms of LBD, except for one. He never said he had hallucinations,” wrote Susan. However, doctors later noted he might’ve been concealing symptoms from those close to him.
Susan writes that she may never understand the suffering her husband went through or how hard he fought to overcome Lewy body dementia. However, she notes, “I saw the bravest man in the world playing the hardest role of his life.”
Robin Williams’ wife Susan receives the autopsy results
After Williams’ death, Susan wrote about her numerous consultations with doctors to establish what was wrong with her late husband. She consulted four doctors who all agreed the case was the “worst pathologies they had seen.”
The doctors’ assertion was echoed by a forensic pathologist who revealed that Williams was suffering from Lewy body dementia. According to Susan, her husband clinically had Parkinson’s disease, but “the presence of Lewy bodies took his life.”
Susan wrote about how the “massive proliferation of Lewy bodies throughout his brain had done so much damage to neurons and neurotransmitters that you could say he had chemical warfare in his brain.” This shows how severe Robin Williams’ condition was.
