Prince William wants George and Charlotte to talk about their feelings
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Prince George and sister Charlotte are being brought up to talk about their feelings, dad William has said.
William, 34, spoke out alongside wife Kate and brother Harry as part of their mental health campaign.
It comes as Harry, 32, revealed he needed counselling after 20 years of burying his grief over the death of mother Princess Diana in 1997, when he was just 12 years old.
Harry revealed it was William, 34, who encouraged him to finally seek help.
William is clear that openness and talking through problems is a very important aspect of mental health – and something he and wife Kate are determined to encourage in their children.
He said: “Catherine and I are clear that we want both George and Charlotte to grow up feeling able to talk about their emotions and feelings.”
(Photo: Getty)
(Photo: Reuters)
William, Kate and Harry have joined forces on their Heads Together campaign which encourages people to talk.
William said he was inspired to help combat the stigma surrounding mental health as he dealt with tragic suicide cases while working as an air ambulance pilot in East Anglia.
“My first call-out was to a male suicide,” he said. “And I was told there were five suicides or attempted suicides every day in East Anglia alone.”
Harry told how his own problems came to the fore in his late 20s.
He said: “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.
“I’ve probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle.
“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? 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’.”
After several years of suppressing his emotions they threatened to overwhelm him, and he went through two years of “total chaos”.
That was when, with William’s encouragement, he went to see a “shrink” several times.
“(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,” he said.
He also took up boxing to help deal with aggression after feeling he was “on the verge of punching someone”.
Harry, who is fifth in line to the throne, described at times facing anxiety during royal engagements but said he was now in a “good place”.
He served in the Army for 10 years, including two stints in Afghanistan, but said he was fortunate that he had not had any experiences in the army that had affected him.
Harry, whose charity work includes supporting wounded soldiers, said that getting help had meant he could devote himself to causes he believes in.
“Because of the process I have been through over the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve now been able to take my work seriously, been able to take my private life seriously as well, and been able to put blood, sweat and tears into the things that really make a difference and things that I think will make a difference to everybody else,” he said.
(Photo: WireImage)
(Photo: PA)
(Photo: REUTERS)
Sue Baker, director of Time to Change, praised Harry saying: “Prince Harry sharing his experiences of mental health issues and the counselling he sought as a result of losing his mother will have helped change attitudes, not just at home but also overseas.
She said speaking out about mental health “helps to overturn generations of stigma by shifting outdated attitudes and challenging discrimination”.
Following his decision to speak out Prince Harry was praised by the Prime Minister Theresa May and a number of MPs shared their own experiences of dealing with grief on Twitter.
Chuka Umunna MP wrote: “Big big respect to Prince Harry for opening up about his mental health and grief.
“Losing a parent so young is v.tough. I lost my Dad at 13 -doing so in the public eye wld have been harder still”.
John Woodcock wrote of his experiences: “Prince Harry opening up about the way he processed his grief will help a lot of people.
“My chaos and madness after losing my sister kicked in straight away. Grateful people stuck with me. Well done Harry for talking about this.”
John Nicholson MP said: “Good for Prince Harry. Having lost my dad as a young teenager I can relate to what he says about locking away grief. #mentalhealth”.
Matt Warman MP said: “My parents died when I was 28 - Prince Harry has done a huge service to all of us who struggled to deal with loss.”
Prince Harry, Prince William and Kate Middleton started Heads Together to bring together a number of mental health charities which deal with issues which are close to The Duke and Duchess and Prince Harry’s passions. .
This includes CALM (The Campaign Against Living Miserably) which works to end the stigma surrounding men’s mental health.
Prince William and Harry spoke to the charity’s CALMzine, a grassroots magazine, for their marathon edition.
Heads Together, which is the official charity of Sunday’s London Marathon are Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, Best Beginnings, Contact (a military mental health coalition), Mind, Place2Be, The Mix and YoungMinds.
With their Heads Together campaign, the princes are following in their late mother’s charitable footsteps.
Diana helped tackle the stigma surrounding people who were HIV positive at a time when society was terrified of the condition.
She once said: “Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in society.
“It is a goal and an essential part of my life – a kind of destiny. Whoever is in distress can call on me. I will come running wherever they are.”