Williams' widow points to dementia as a cause of his suicide last year

Los Angeles

FOR the first time in over a year, the widow of the actor Robin Williams is speaking publicly about the circumstances that preceded Williams' death, and sharing details about a disease he had when he died.

In interviews with People magazine and with ABC News, Susan Schneider Williams lay the blame for her husband's suicide in 2014 not on depression, but on diffuse Lewy body dementia. "It was not depression that killed Robin," she said in the magazine interview. "Depression was one of, let's call it, 50 symptoms, and it was a small one."