Prince Harry speaks about how he dealt with Meghan feeling suicidal

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Prince Harry has taken another swipe at the Royal Family during a bonus episode of his Apple+ TV series, The Me You Can’t See,  and revealed he was working with Oprah on the show for two years.

In the 90-minute special, Harry spoke about how families fail to discuss mental health issues due to feelings of ‘shame’, before he bonded with Robin Williams’ son, Zak, who made a guest appearance on the program. 

‘Your father was a real hero of mine,’ Harry cooed after Zak joined the show via video link. ‘He brought so much joy and entertainment to so many people’. 

The former Royal remarked that he and Zak were both unable to properly grieve the deaths of their famous parents amid so much publicity. 

Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, prompting an international outpouring of grief similar in scale to the untimely death of Princess Diana back in 1997.  

Speaking candidly about his father’s death, Zak explained that he felt a disconnect between his private emotions and the collective public mourning that occurred. 

‘From my end I didn’t get a chance to focus on the private grieving process until a year and a half after my dad passed away,’ he stated. 

Harry concurred, saying: ‘We have a lot of shared experience when you see so many people around the world grieving for someone they feel they knew better than you did because you’re unable to grieve yourself.’ 

Elsewhere during the bonus episode, actress Glenn Close made an appearance, saying it was important to speak openly about mental health issues with family members.  

Close admitted that her family covered up a genetic history of mental illness, and that she subsequently felt shame for not realizing her sister had been feeling suicidal. 

Harry chimed in, stating: ‘There’s an element of shame that we feel because we’re like ‘How could we have not have seen it? How could we not know? How did you not feel comfortable enough to share that with me?”

It appears Harry was taking a dig at the Royal Family, who he has previously accused of ignoring mental health issues. 

In a previous episode of The Me You Can’t See, Harry confessed that he did not know how to react when wife Meghan Markle told him that she was feeling suicidal because his family had not had candid conversations about their well-being. 

‘I’m somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with it,’ Harry revealed of the moment Meghan said she wanted to kill herself in January 2019.  

‘And of course, because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event. Then step out into a wall of cameras and pretend as though everything’s okay.’

However, in the new bonus episode, Harry told Oprah –  with whom he produced the docuseries – that he now feels better equipped to respond to someone who tells him that they want to end their own life.

‘So many people are afraid of being on the receiving end of that conversation [from a suicidal person] because they don’t feel like they have the right tools to give the right advice,’ Harry stated.

‘But what you want to say is ‘You’re there’. Listen, because listening and being part of that conversation is without doubt the best first step that you can take.’ 

Harry and Oprah also reflected on what they had learned during the course of filming the show and agreed that the best piece of advice they received was to tell a suicidal person that they are ‘not alone’. 

Meanwhile, Harry also stated that he believes climate change is inextricably linked to mental health, and that they are the two biggest issues facing the modern world. 

‘The connecting line is about our collective well-being and when our collective well-being erodes, that effects our ability to be caretakers of ourselves, of our communities and of our planet ultimately,’ he stated.

‘We have to create a more supportive culture for each other where challenges don’t have to live in the dark, where vulnerability is healthy and encouraged and, of course, where physical and mental health can be treated equally because they are one.’

The release of Thursday night’s bonus episode of The Me You Can’t See comes just hours after Harry appeared in a new mental health campaign video promoting ‘mental fitness’.

Supporting the organization Peak State, Prince Harry told viewers of the campaign video: ‘Peak State is striving to build a global community that understands the importance of mental fitness and feels empowered to attain it.’  

Peak State is a new social enterprise set up by two Invictus Games medallists, David Wiseman and Nathan Jones, both of whom have recovered from serious injuries sustained in service with the British military.