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Prince Harry Reveals Mental Health Struggle Following Death of His Mother

Christine Rousselle
Christine Rousselle  |  April 17, 2017 8:25 AM

Prince Harry is garnering praise for a revealing interview with The Telegraph where he described his mental health struggles following the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997. Harry said that while he bottled his emotions for the better part of two decades, and that he finally sought counseling after nearly suffering a nervous breakdown. 

Harry said that a period of "two years of total chaos" finally inspired him to get help. He said that he was doing this interview in order to make a different for others, and to show a good example for younger members of the Royal family.

Prince Harry said of his loss: “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?

“[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’.

“So I was a typical 20, 25, 28-year-old running around going ‘life is great’, or ‘life is fine’ and that was exactly it.

“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.”

He said he now counts himself very lucky that it was “only two years … of total chaos” before he learnt how to talk about it. “I just couldn’t put my finger on it,” he said. “I just didn’t know what was wrong with me.”

Harry is being praised for his frank honesty on a topic that many people shy away from.