Frontlines: Robin Williams and Our Attitude Towards Depression

Gaza, Iraq and the Ukraine were temporarily bumped off the front-pages last week when news came through from San Francisco of Robin Williams’ tragic death. The initial reports suggested suicide, and so it proved to be.

Marin County sheriff Lieutenant Keith Boyd confirmed that the 63-year-old actor and comedian had been found by his personal assistant “clothed in a seated position, unresponsive, with a belt secured around his neck with the other end of the belt wedged between the closet door and the door frame.” It was also revealed that Williams had slashed at his left wrist with a pocketknife before asphyxiating himself.
A few asinine comments aside – former Scotland international footballer Alan Brazil scraped the bottom of the barrel with his “What you leave behind is diabolical. I’m really annoyed about that. I don’t have a lot of sympathy” rant on UK radio – most of the media coverage has been measured, and acknowledging of the lifelong struggle Williams had had with mental illness.
Dara Ó Briain was one of the first to call for journalistic restraint.
“Let’s not let this news bolster the dumb, pat cliché about ‘Tears of a Clown’,” he urged. “Depression is an illness that strikes anywhere in society. There are people who can offer help; without judgement or obligation.”
Those sentiments were echoed by Spin 1038 DJ Nikki Hayes, whose depression last year led to her attempting to take her own life.
“In light of Robin Williams’ apparent suicide, remember to talk to Pieta House and many more. I too was affected,” she said. “Mental health issues are a real illness. I wish people would finally acknowledge this fact.”

WRONG AND HURTFUL
Suicide had hit the headlines the week before in Ireland when the newly installed Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, announced that following consultations with families, suicide will no longer be included on short-form death certificates. It’s a decision of which musician and Voice Of Ireland mentor Niall Breslin, who told Hot Press recently about his own mental health issues, is highly critical.
“It’s jurassic thinking,” he insists, “and a return to the bad old days when the word ‘suicide’ was never mentioned and families were made to feel ashamed about what had happened to their loved ones. It’ll merely stigmatise – and that’s wrong and hurtful.
“For a very intelligent woman so early on in her job, it’s a really bad decision,” the Cycle Against Suicide ambassador continues. “I’d like to ask Joan Burton, ‘Which families have you consulted with?’ and, ‘Do you honestly think this is going to benefit the fight for mental health in this country?’ So far, instead of real rationale, she’s backed it up with horse-shit.”
Those aren’t the only questions Breslin has for Joan Burton and the Government.
“Where is the national strategy for tackling suicide? What about the people literally taking their own lives because they can’t pay their mortgages? There doesn’t seem to be any genuine desire within government to tackle those issues.”
SENSE OF ALIENATION
Joan Burton’s decision was also questioned by Terence Casey, coroner for east and south Kerry, in an interview with Newstalk.
“It means there’ll be no record of the amount of people who take their lives,” he stated. “I’ve been speaking openly for the last couple of years about suicide, to try to bring it home to people that it’s not something to be hidden, it’s something to be talked about, to reduce the amount of deaths by suicide. This will totally and absolutely reverse what I’ve been doing.”
“I heard him on the radio yesterday,” Niall Breslin says, “and he was spot-on. Terence Casey is in the frontline in Kerry and Clare where the suicide rate is off the scale – and where it’s perhaps least understood. All Joan Burton is doing is compounding the problem.”
Breslin was also angered earlier in the year when John Waters made the claim in an Irish Times op-ed piece that there is “no such thing” as depression.
“My point with John, again a highly intelligent man, is that when I was 15 I desperately wanted somebody to publicly talk about depression so that I didn’t feel like I was possessed, and the only person in some unbelievably dark place that I’d never get out of. Imagine another 15-year-old who’s in that dark place now reading John Waters’ article? The sense of alienation would be massive.”
Breslin believes that article is part of a broader media inability to come to terms with the subject.
“I’ve explored the idea of developing documentaries on mental health, but the media has a kind of allergy towards it because it’s ‘too heavy’,” he reflects. “They think viewers will immediately hit the remote and watch Sex In The City instead. Yes, it’s a serious subject, but you can bring positivity to mental health, you can bring humour to it – you can talk about it in lots of different ways.
“The most important day of my life,” he concludes, “was when I was able to talk to my parents about my depression. It was like, ‘Jeez, now that my family and friends know, I can explore ways of dealing with it’. I’m still dealing with it. It’s part of my daily life and always will be but by talking about it, not feeling stigmatised and getting the right help, you can get to a good place.”