Robin Williams Found Himself Increasingly Prone to Depression, Fought to Maintain Sobriety

At the Los Angeles Times, "Robin Williams' friends saw signs he was succumbing to depression":

The end was shockingly sudden: a belt hung on a door; an assistant's distraught call to 911. But the road that led to Robin Williams' apparent suicide at age 63 was a long one — and if you knew where to look, there were plenty of signposts indicating trouble along the way.

In the wake of Williams' death at his home here Monday, fans around the world have struggled to understand what could have led a man whose thousand-megawatt comic persona had brought so much joy to millions to such depths of despair. But Williams' closest friends and colleagues knew well that beneath his manic, Technicolor exterior, the actor had battled depression for years.

In recent months — as Williams wrestled with the cancellation of his CBS TV series "The Crazy Ones" and fought to maintain a sobriety that had at times proved fragile — those friends could see that he was losing that fight.

"He started to disconnect," comedian Rick Overton, a friend of Williams' since the 1970s, said Tuesday. "He wasn't returning calls as much. He would send texts and things like that, but they would get shorter and shorter."

Williams appeared to have died of asphyxia due to hanging, authorities said Tuesday. The actor's wife, Susan Schneider, had left their home that morning at 10:30. His assistant arrived about an hour later and found him hanging by a belt affixed to a closet door, slightly elevated in a seated position, Lt. Keith Boyd, assistant deputy chief coroner for the Marin County Sheriff's Department, told reporters. Recent cut marks were visible on his wrist, and a pocket knife was found near his body.

Boyd confirmed that Williams had "received treatment for depression" but declined to speculate on what may have led the actor to take his own life. Toxicology tests will be conducted to determine whether he had drugs or alcohol in his system. Boyd declined to say whether Williams had left a note.

Comedian and longtime friend Steven Pearl ran into Williams at a barbecue last month in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he could see that something was wrong. Williams, who had battled drug and alcohol addiction early in his career, had just come out of a stint in rehab in Minnesota, where he had gone, his publicist said at the time, to "fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment" to his sobriety.

"You could just tell something was off," Pearl said. "He seemed detached. It's hard to explain. He didn't seem like his usual self. My fiancee and I were like, 'Is he OK?' I didn't know it would get this dark."

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