Robin Williams Suicide

Robin Williams' suicide was very sad, but not because of the suicide itself, but how he did it without conscious preparation.  His suicide was an act of being in extreme despair.  Current events in his life triggered the repressed despair of the child he once was and because he did not understand what was happening, it drove him into an act of desperation, the way he committed suicide, he showed the world the terror and despair he lived with as a child that he used humor all of his life to keep repressed, but whatever people use as a form of medication to repress eventually stops working and in the long run makes it worse. It's very sad that in his last hours on this earth he was in such despair and dies in the emotional prison of his childhood. No amount of money and fame could have saved him.

"As I have repeatedly stressed, it is not the trauma itself that is the source of illness but the unconscious, repressed, hopeless despair over not being allowed to give expression to what one has suffered and the fact that one is not allowed to show and is unable to experience feelings of rage, anger, humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness. This causes many people to commit suicide because life no longer seems worth living if they are totally unable to live out all these strong feelings that are part of their true self. Naturally, we cannot require parents to face something they are unable to face, but we can keep confronting them with the knowledge that it was not suffering per se that made their child ill but its repression, which was essential for the sake of the parents. I have found that this knowledge often provides parents with an "aha!" experience that opens up for them the possibility of mourning, thus helping to reduce their guilt feelings."

-- Alice Miller

Above excerpt from Sylvia Plath: An Example of Forbidden Suffering

from the book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing

and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller

Also read the post Commentsto Robin Williams’ Suicide Post – Humor Entices you to be Blind