I remain convinced that this was accidental death due to autoerotic asphyxia.
Thereās no way Robin Williams wouldnāt make it funny SOMEHOW.
Every HOUR, one of my fellow veterans commits suicide. Nobody cared about that statistic, even when the V.A.ās deadly inner dysfunctions were briefly and partly exposed to public view. JUST SAYINā.
Pity veterans as a group donāt vote their self-interest. They keep electing people who promise to slash their benefits. Properly funding the VA wouldnāt solve every problem, but quite a few.
The linked article mentioned Robin needed to attend a rehab facility recently to āfine tune his sobrietyā. If that doesnāt scream in your face how bad we are at dealing/talking/managing addictions, I donāt know what does. This has me heart broken, not just because of how amazing he was. But if a genius, who had every tool imaginable can succumbāwith every positive externality you could think ofāthen what is left for us?
Even though I despise throwing a pill at every problem, I firmly believe at some point a collection of physical sources will be isolated for addiction/depression/mania. Counseling and psychological techniques take us so far, but they are only one tool.
āAll parties should understand that a scientific basis exists
for concern that news coverage of suicide may contribute to the causation of suicide.ā
Thatās troubling language. Strong correlation, sure. But I was under the impression that the causative agent behind suicide was mental health.
You balk at conflating causation and correlation, yet do it right there. Most persons who have mental health problems are not suicidal, and not all persons who commit suicide have mental health problems.
In re: the causative effect of badly publicization of suicide, itās very real:
Both of you are being really gross right now.
Irreverent, Iāll perhaps grant you. Gross is entirely subjective, however, and therefor essentially meaningless outside of discourse with people who know your tastes.
A FUCKLOAD of us are anti-war Social Democrats. Weāre a MINORITY voting concern. Itās the assholes who LOVE WAR and donāt care about putting people in harmās way so long as it keeps gas prices low.
Donāt blame the political rolls on US - itās you āciviliansā at fault.
Right, but if someone has an auto-immune disorder and you expose them to the general populace when you know theyāre frailā¦
The causative agency is in your hands, even if the cause is out of your control.
Well, I think you nailed it --we need better tools and we donāt do a very good job (as a society) of addressing mental illness. My experience is that depression is often seen as and felt as a personal failing rather than dysfunctional biochemistry/physiology. It is so easy to self-ostracizeā¦those positive externalities better be damn persistent.
Great post. Much love 
Guys, really. I care about this topic, too, but can we move it to another thread perhaps?
I hear and greatly empathize with you. If this was real life Iād give you a bear hug.
I think we need to look at it as a social issue, too. Itās not just a biochemistry/physicology issue. People who suffer depression are often ostracized, even by those who love them, in part because we are far less compassionate of each other. Lots of people love to talk about self-compassion, and thatās important and great, but we are inherently social creatures- isolation can take a deep toll on peopleās psyche. We have a culture that is individualistic, we often have people who are deeply isolated as a result. While biochemistry plays a role and that aspect of mental health needs to be addressed, I just donāt think itās silver bullet if we donāt change our culture. We have little to no support structure in our society anymore. We are overworked, overmedicated, and constantly told how we fail to measure up to the fun house mirror of our popular culture. That deeply exacerbates the problems people have that are medical in nature.
Geez, letās write a book together.
I still have the opinion that behaviors can be un-intensified, trauma can be treated, and drugs can help us not want to harm ourselves or others. But that is just a belief, not fact. 
:edit: I sounded quite adversarial. I wanted to sound conversational.
Good news: the outcome research agrees with you! Weāre still trying to figure out exactly what works, for whom, when, and why and how. But the research agrees that therapy is better than no therapy, and that therapy + meds is, for most people, better than either alone or no treatment at all for mood disorders. I wish we had more specifics, but weāre on the road there.
No, I donāt think you sound adversarialā¦ I agree about trauma and that drugs can be helpful, but we also live in a culture that creates and exacerbates mental illness, and that treats people as disposable to an unacceptable degree. Although I think the debate that started was inappropriate for the thread, @AnonKopimi brings up an important point about soldiers and mental illness. Too often, the mental illnesses they face was not due to their own biochemistry, but due to being sent to a war zone and then expected to cope with what they witnessed/participated in with no sort of help - first hand, I know that can be bad for the men and women involved.
Most of us live lives that puts a ton of stress on us, where we are constantly having to deal with fight or flight responses to things that really donāt require that much stress (do we really need those TPS reports, is the world going to burn if we donāt get them now?), and that screws with us. We spend far less time outside then we should, we stay up too late (case in point, right now), we donāt exercise, and get up too early, work too longā¦ And rather than deal with the stresses by having less stress, we get prescribed anti-aniexty meds from our PCP. I think over medication is a huge problem and itās being aimed not at people who have real hard to deal with mental illnesses, but people who are overstressed from work. Like many other things, resources are being diverted to those who can pay for them, not the ones who need them (not that the people with money shouldnāt have mental health care, but that we ALL should have mental health care).
I have lots of strong thoughts on therapy and medication, too, but itās really for another discussion and I doubt my views would be popular (they tend not to be with my friends). But really, I just feel that we are deeply unkind to each other and we are isolated in our daily lives. This is not helping our mental health problems as a society.
But yeah, we should totally write a book! 
I appreciate your toneāfor every Robert Downey junior, sia or others there are way more geniuses who go a route we all donāt want them to take. I am not insinuating that addiction is the kernal of all of them, but it is a reoccurring theme.
Have a great night and letās all try to appreciate the troubled, wonderful people we love
Here is another site that is dedicated to the education of the media on suicide reporting (it would probably be more useful than the dry CDC paper):
http://reportingonsuicide.org/
And here is one that talks about mental health reporting in general:
