I have stayed away from speculations about Robin William’s suicide. I don’t know what pushed him over and neither do you. The autopsy showed that he had not been drinking or using illegal drugs, but he was taking prescription drugs. And what were they? It is important to take note that two of these prescription drugs were antidepressants. And he began taking Seroquel a week before he committed suicide. This is very suspicious. Antidepressants have been implicated in suicides by children and by adolescents. It is already established that that they embolden people to act on suicidal tendencies. The black box warning has been avoided in adults, but it is only a matter of time.
Antidepressants numb and harden people and make them not feel. This sometimes makes it seem like they are not depressed, because it numbs them from feeling. I wrote about this in “Add Tony Scott to the list of suicides on antidepressants”. Also see “To recover from the Numbing and Addictive Effects of Antidepressants”, as well as many other blogs. And I’ll reiterate that its not so simple to just stop them. They are habituating and generate very disturbing and frightening side effects. Stopping antidepressants should be done slowly with careful supervision.
I can only wish that Robin Williams was in a good psychotherapy. His loss is such a great tragedy.
Robert A. Berezin, MD is the author of “Psychotherapy of Character, the Play of Consciousness in the Theater of the Brain"