RJ Mitte’s death at 34 is a profound loss, and our thoughts are with his fiancée, family and everyone who loved him.

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RJ was most famously known as an actor with cerebral palsy playing a character with cerebral palsy, at a time when disabled roles routinely went to non-disabled actors, and he used that visibility to insist that disabled people belong on screen. For a generation of viewers, seeing someone like themselves on one of television’s most celebrated dramas changed what they thought was possible. That kind of impact is impossible to measure, and it will outlast him.

As such, before I say anything else, it cannot be overstated that we do not know what RJ was going through, and it would be wrong to speculate. Suicide is complex and rarely has a single root cause. However, what is clear is that so many of us are shocked by RJ’s death because, from the outside looking in, he did not ‘appear’ to be struggling. And yet it is worth considering what we ask of young people like him.

As a teenager, RJ became not only an actor on one of the most-watched shows in the world, but a role model, a spokesperson and, for many, a symbol of what disabled people could achieve. That is an extraordinary amount to carry at an........

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