Prince Harry Speaks About Mother’s Death For ‘The Telegraph’ Mental Health Podcast

Prince Harry has given an unprecedented insight about how he came to terms with his mother’s 1997 death in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph‘s Bryony Gordon for her new Mad World mental health podcast series.

“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,” the Prince told Ms Gordon during the 30 minute interview.

“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,” he also said, explaining he only sought help when he was 28 after “two years … of total chaos” in his personal life where he “didn’t know what was wrong with [him]”. The Prince credited his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, and other close family and friends with helping him come to the realisation that he needed to speak to someone about his mother’s death.

Harry confirmed he had seen a counsellor after he decided something needed to change, and that he had 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.” He also took up boxing as a way of letting out built-up aggressions, which he said “really saved me because I was on the verge of punching someone”.

“The experience I have had is that once you start talking about it, you realise that actually you’re part of quite a big club,” the Prince said of his own mental health journey, which was not negatively impacted by his tours of Afghanistan.

The Prince told Ms Gordon that he hoped, through the Heads Together Campaign, that he was able to help others seek help for their own mental health, and that “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.”

Prince Harry with his mother, Diana, in 1986

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Tagged Diana Princess of Wales, Interview, Media, Mental Health, Prince Harry of Wales.

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