Kabir Bedi’s son Siddharth was only 25 when he died by suicide after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. In a recent interview, Kabir opened up about the tragic chapter in his life and shared that his son was in treatment for his mental health at the time of his death. Kabir shared that his son was a graduate from Carnegie Mellon University in the US and was academically brilliant, and that it was during his time at the university that he was diagnosed with depression.“Siddharth was a brilliant boy,” he told Filmfare and added, “There’s nothing more painful for a parent than the death of a child and when that child also happens to be a genius, with the greatest prospects in the world, it becomes even more painful. And that again was something that didn’t happen suddenly. His diagnosis sort of began at Carnegie Mellon while he was graduating, he was diagnosed with depression.” Kabir shared that Siddharth’s symptoms got worse with time and he became “more and more reclusive.”Kabir shared that Siddharth started travelling to his friend’s houses around the world and even visited Kerala, India, during this time. “In Kerala, he started behaving strangely because he started seeing these visions and describing what he is seeing and everyone asked Protima (Siddharth’s mother) to come and take him away. I was in California at the time,” he said. Kabir Bedi with son Siddharth Bedi. (Photo: Kabir Bedi/Instagram)Kabir shared that Siddharth then had a “violent outbreak” in Montreal, Canada, when he was staying at a friend’s house. “He started hallucinating and he ran on the streets and started climbing fences. Everybody caught him and subdued him and took him to the mental health facility from where I was called in California. And then I brought him back to California and we tried to… He was under the supervision of the doctors of the UCLA. And we tried to find out ways to sort out this terrible problem but it was after the breakdown in Montreal that the diagnosis of schizophrenia was clear. Then we knew what we were treating. But again, the problem is, if the patient doesn’t accept that he has a problem, even giving medication becomes a problem,” he shared.Kabir then shared that his son started talking about suicide and so he called in professionals who could speak to him but, unfortunately, he died a week later. “Before he went, when he was talking about suicide, he would say, ‘What do I do? What do I do all day? Nothing makes sense to me. Television has no meaning. I don’t understand books. Films, I see sometimes, I like funny things but nothing matters. Food, I can barely taste. What do I do all day?’ How do you answer that? I told him, ‘I am there, talk to me’. He would ask, ‘What is the purpose of living this life?’ And the problem was, the medication he took made him feel drugged and zoned out because the medication in those days were largely to make people safe for society so they weren’t violent so when he didn’t take his medicine, he felt wonderful. So giving the medicines became a huge problem,” he shared.ALSO READ | The Beatles and their disruptive trip to India: The ‘Transcendental Meditation’ that changed the Abbey Road musicians foreverKabir said that the medications are much better now and spoke about what he went through after Siddharth’s death in 1997. “To lose a child is like having an arm torn off your body. It was that painful and it numbs you, it shocks you, it disorients you. It certainly disoriented me. I used to go into auditions, I didn’t know what I was doing. I lost work. I couldn’t focus. It was highly traumatic for me but at the end of the day, life has to go on and you learn to live with it but it never goes away. That memory always stirs something deep and primal inside you,” he shared.Siddharth was 25 when he passed away in 1997.Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:Kabir Bedi