Lee Thompson Young: Depression, Religion to Blame For Young Actor's Suicide? Skip to Content

With questions continuing to be raised over why Lee Thompson Young killed himself at the age of 29 this week, a new report points to a pair of possible reasons:

  1. Depression.
  2. Religion.

An unnamed source tells the site that Young had suffered from the former for a long time, while confirming that the Rizzoli & Isles star was anything but a party animal during his time on Earth.

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"He was the opposite. Lee loved to travel and was always the first to tell everyone to take a breath and enjoy the beauty of life," the insider says, adding the star was "gentle and unassuming" despite a lot of success in Hollywood.

 

Some close to Young, however, say things "changed" a bit in recent years when he started to practice an Africa-based religion known as "Yorùbá."

Young allegedly "took [his religion] to the next level and started wearing white all of the time," says a source. "This religion was everything to him."

But while Yorùbá does not espouse suicide as anything to admire, this same source confirms that Young visited a small village in Africa just prior to his death, re-engaging in the religion and taking it more seriously than ever.

Without a suicide note at the scene, however, this is all conjecture. We’ll never truly know what was going through the young man’s mind.

Production on Rizzoli & Isles Season 4, meanwhile, has been suspended in the wake of this tragic event.