Mental illness doesn’t discriminate. Prince William, Prince Harry, Duchess Kate and more members of the royal family have opened up about their mental health struggles over the years.
William and Harry, for their part, have been candid about how the death of their mother, Princess Diana, has affected them.
“My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help?” Harry recalled in 2017. “[I thought] it’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back. So from an emotional side, I was like, right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything. And then [I] started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with.”
Diana died in 1997 at the age of 36. While William was 15, Harry was just 12 years old at time.
“My brother, you know, bless him, he was a huge support to me,” Harry said in the same 2017 interview with the Telegraph. “He kept saying, ‘This is not right, this is not normal, you need to talk to [someone] about stuff, it’s OK.’”
Along with Kate, the brothers subsequently teamed up to launch Heads Together, an initiative to try to tackle the stigma surrounding mental health in the U.K.
“It was Catherine who first realized that all three of us were working on mental health in our individual areas of focus,” William revealed in 2017. “She had seen that at the core of adult issues like addiction and family breakdown, unresolved childhood mental health issues were often part of the problem.”
After Harry married Meghan Markle in 2018, she joined the initiative. In May 2019, the two couples launched a text messaging helpline that aims to support people in crisis.
“We are incredibly excited to be launching this service, knowing it has the potential to reach thousands of vulnerable people every day,” they said in a statement at the time. “Over the last few months Shout has started working quietly behind the scenes. We have all been able to see the service working up close and are so excited for its future.”
Harry and Meghan later split from their joint charity with William and Kate. In January 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex took a step back from their royal duties, moving to the United States.
Scroll through to read the most candid quotes from the royal family:
In August 2020, Harry and Meghan gushed over their love for self-help guru Brené Brown and Center for Humane Technology cofounder Tristan Harris during a chat with Hunter Johnson. Johnson quoted one of Brown's philosophies and additionally referenced Harris.
“I love the fact you’re quoting Brené Brown and also bringing up Tristan Harris because they are two people we absolutely adore as well,” Harry said, while Meghan added, “We love them!”
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“Catherine and I are clear that we want both George and Charlotte to grow up feeling able to talk about their emotions and feelings,” the Duke of Cambridge said in April 2017. “We will all go through tough times in our lives, but men especially feel the need to pretend that everything is OK, and that admitting this to their friends will make them appear weak. I can assure you this is actually a sign of strength."
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"The relation between the job and the personal life was what really took me over the edge,” William explained at 2018 mental health conference. ”And I started feeling things that I’ve never felt before. And I got very sad and very down. … You start to take away bits of the job and keep them in your body."
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During the May 2020 documentary Football, Prince William and Our Mental Health, the prince admitted becoming a father is “overwhelming.”
“I think when you’ve been through something traumatic in life ... my mother dying when I was younger – your emotions come back in leaps and bounds because it’s a very different phase of life,” he admitted. “And there’s no one there to, kind of, help you, and I definitely found it very, at times, overwhelming.”
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William revealed in the May 2020 doc that he got anxious while public speaking. "Certain days, especially certain speeches as well, when I was growing up, you definitely get a bit of anxiety about it,” he said. "Weirdly the sort of thing that helped me which I didn't actually realize at the time, was … my eyesight started to sort of tail off a little bit when I got older and I didn't used to wear contacts when I was working. So actually when I gave speeches, I couldn't see anyone's face. And it helps, because it's just a blur of faces."
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“Mental health is how we feel and think,” the duchess said in September 2018. “Things that can’t really be seen, but that affect us every day and talking about them can feel difficult … Sometimes, it’s just a simple conversation that can make things better.”
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Kate spoke about the importance of supporting mothers in January 2019.
"It's so hard. You get a lot of support with the baby as a mother, particularly in the early days, but after the age of [12 months] it falls away,” she said. “After that there isn't a huge amount — lots of books to read. Everybody experiences the same struggle.”
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"We all have mental health in the same way that we all have physical health,” Harry said at a veterans' mental health conference in 2017. "It's OK to have depression, it's OK to have anxiety, it's OK to have adjustment disorder.”
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The Duke of Sussex spoke candidly about the death of Diana during an interview with the Telegraph in 2017.
"I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” he explained. "I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions … The experience I have had is that once you start talking about it, you realize that actually you’re part of quite a big club."
He added: “What we are trying to do is normalize the conversation to the point where anyone can sit down and have a coffee and just go, ‘You know what, I’ve had a really s—t day, can I just tell about it?’ Because then you walk away and it’s done.”
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The Suits alum opened up about the effects of social media in 2018.
"Young people find it so difficult. You see photos on social media and you don’t know whether she’s born with it or maybe it’s a filter,” Meghan explained. “Your judgement of your sense of self-worth becomes really skewed when it’s all based on likes.”
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The duchess made headlines when she candidly admitted that she wasn’t “OK” during the October 2019 documentary, Harry & Meghan: An African Journey.
“Look, any woman, especially when they’re pregnant, you’re really vulnerable. And so that was made really challenging, and then, when you have a newborn, you know?” she said. “Especially as a woman, it’s really … it’s a lot. So you add this on top of just trying to be a new mom and trying to be a newlywed … And also thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK, but it’s a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.”
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Two years before her untimely passing, Diana spoke about her battle with postpartum depression, which was very taboo at the time.
“Then I was unwell with post-natal depression, which no one ever discusses, post-natal depression, you have to read about it afterwards, and that in itself was a bit of a difficult time. You'd wake up in the morning feeling you didn't want to get out of bed, you felt misunderstood, and just very, very low in yourself,” she told BBC in 1995. “I never had had a depression in my life. But then when I analyzed it I could see that the changes I'd made in the last year had all caught up with me, and my body had said: ‘We want a rest.’”
She added that she couldn’t “cope with the pressure” that was put on her.
“It was a very short space of time: in the space of a year my whole life had changed, turned upside down, and it had its wonderful moments, but it also had challenging moments. And I could see where the rough edges needed to be smoothed,” Diana explained. “I was actually crying out because I wanted to get better in order to go forward and continue my duty and my role as wife, mother, Princess of Wales. … I didn't like myself, I was ashamed because I couldn't cope with the pressures.”
Diana also addressed her battle with bulimia at the time.
“That’s like a secret disease,” she said. “You inflict it upon yourself because your self-esteem is at a low ebb, and you don’t think you’re worthy or valuable.”
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"It's been a really difficult time for us all," the Duchess of Cambridge said during a virtual assembly with the Oak National Academy amid the coronavirus pandemic in June 2020. "But it's important to know that these feelings and frustrations are totally normal, and that they won't last forever. As we help others, we mustn't forget to nurture ourselves by taking the time to focus on the things that make us feel happy too. This might be playing our favorite game, being outside, or talking to our friends. ... Look after yourselves, reach out when you need help, and do your part to support those in need."
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While speaking with former Invictus Games competitors over Zoom in August, the prince thanked the athletes for being an example for how "every single one of us has the strength inside us to confront anything that comes across us," even in challenging times. "With COVID and the way that everyone's life has changed, what better time to put you guys front and center to say, 'This is what's happened in my life. That was the dark place that I was in but look at where I am now,'" Harry added. "It's so important to know that if you're going to have a bad day, if you've had a bad week or you've experienced more trauma or another loss or more stress in your life that you've got at your fingertips, whether it's a WhatsApp group whether it's an online support group. ... If you haven’t heard from someone for a while you know that the first thing you need to do is check in with them."
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