Prince Harry in his own words

On his own mental health

“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.’

On dealing with things now

‘What we are trying to do is normalise the conversation to the point that anyone can sit down and have a coffee and just go, “you know what, I’ve had a really s — day, can I just tell you about it?” because then you walk away and its done. Rather than a week later or 20 years later, what could have been something small could grow into this beast of a snowball which you can’t dislodge.’

On recovery

“The best or the easiest people to speak to is a shrink or whoever ... I’ve done that a couple of times, more than a couple of times.”

On struggling during his twenties

“I can count myself very lucky. It was 20 years of not thinking about it and two years of total chaos.”

On not processing his grief

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.’

On the pressures of living in the public eye

I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions are coming to you from every angle. But you know, it comes with the job, it comes with the role, and one of the hardest things, I suppose, is not being able to have that voice or being able to stand up for yourself.’

On Prince William’s help

“My brother ... was a huge support to me. Kept saying “this is not right, this is not normal, you need to talk to about stuff, its OK.”

On talking about his feelings

Once I offload my stuff to somebody else I feel so much better. I know there is huge merit in talking about your issues and the only thing about keeping it quiet is, it’s only ever going to make it worse.’

On working with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

“As long as we are this age and we’re still interesting, we want to make as much of a difference as we can for the better.”

The Daily Telegraph