Apparently, the Wales’ kids are having a school holiday this week and next, so we shouldn’t expect to see Prince William or Kate at any public event? The BAFTAs are on Sunday, so I have no idea if BAFTA President William plans on skipping for the second year in a row. Last year, he and Kate skipped because… they were on vacation in Mustique. Anyway, I bring up the school holiday because William did something new: he and his staff organized a few things to drop while William was in the wind. Yesterday, William’s staff announced that Earthshot would be going to Mumbai (and there was a pretaped video with William too). Today, BBC Radio 1 released an interview with William, an interview about mental health and suicide prevention.
The Prince of Wales has said it takes him a long time to understand his emotions during a discussion about male suicide. Prince William said he tried to work out why he felt the way he did as he called on male role models to speak publicly about their mental health.
The future king took part in a special mental health episode of BBC Radio 1’s Life Hacks on Wednesday. He has long campaigned to end the stigma surrounding mental health and suicide. Speaking about his own experiences, the Prince said he hoped to encourage others to talk about the importance of mental health, specifically holding discussions between men.
As part of a panel that included mental health experts, celebrities and a young man who considered taking his own life, the Prince said it was a “national catastrophe” that the issue was not spoken about more, adding: “We’re not very good at talking about it.”
Opening up about his own health, the Prince went on: “I take a long time trying to understand my emotions and why I feel like I do, and I feel like that’s a really important process to do every now and again. Just check in with yourself and work out why you’re feeling like you do – sometimes there’s an obvious explanation, sometimes there isn’t.”
In October, the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Royal Foundation launched its own suicide prevention network.
“Suicide prevention is something I’ve found myself getting more involved in and wanting to talk about, but trying to find the language to talk about it has been quite tricky. I think it’s a real national catastrophe that we don’t talk about it enough,” the Prince told Greg James, the BBC radio presenter, on Wednesday.
He suggested that younger generations were good at talking about their feelings and joked that his own children sometimes spoke “too much to get all the details”.
“You feel a sense you need to fix it for everyone and that I find quite difficult,” he continued. “I have to remind myself – you don’t need to fix everything, but you do need to listen and it’s important to be ok with those feelings and those comments.”
The Prince said he wanted to understand why previous generations did not talk about their feelings, suggesting it was because of their experiences in the world wars.
“They then hand that mantle on to the next generation – not deliberately, but that’s all they knew. We have to break that cycle,” he said. “You have to talk about your emotions, you can’t just bottle it up and pretend they don’t exist because that’s when it all goes wrong and you end up drinking lots, unravelling and being in torment. So it’s important we understand where we are now, we’ve got a long way to go in this journey, but it’s really crucial to understand where we’ve come from.”
Y’all know what I think already, but I’ll just go ahead and say it for the millionth time – William has zero authenticity or legitimacy on these subjects. We’re in the middle of yet another gossip cycle where we’re being reminded yet again that William has spent years weaponizing Prince Harry’s mental health against him, that William has spent years calling Harry “paranoid” and “crazy” and mocking Harry’s proactive efforts to improve his own mental health through therapy and meditation. William and Kate have zero business talking about suicide prevention, given that they’ve never commented on the Duchess of Sussex opening up about her suicidal ideation and never set the record straight about multiple lies they’ve perpetuated against her.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, screencaps courtesy of AppleTV+.
