Prince Harry and the loneliness of depression: “No one could help me”

Not even time to debut on Netflix that Heart of Invictus, the new documentary of prince Harry, it has already ended up at the center of gossip. Blame, again, the subtle attacks of the second son of Charles III and of Lady Diana to the British royal family.

Heart of Invictus is a six-part miniseries dedicated to the Invictus Games, the Olympics dedicated to war veterans that the prince conceived in 2014, but there is much more inside, including the mental health repercussions caused by particularly strong experiences, such as war or like the untimely loss of a parent. And it is here that the prince sinks, again, in the trauma of his mother’s death and then in the aftermath of the months spent in service in Afghanistan, which have marked him in an equally powerful way.

«The biggest effort for me was the people. Nobody around me could really help me. I didn’t have a support structure or a group of experts to help me figure out what I had.”

Then the awareness of needing help. “Unfortunately, like me, the first time you really consider therapy is when you’re lying on the floor in the fetal position, wishing you’d dealt with it sooner. And that’s what I really want to change.” His world – Harry said – collapsed on his return from his mission in Afghanistan, between the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, but it was only a triggering factor, not the real cause of his discomfort. «What was emerging was from 1997, when I was 12 years old», revealed the prince. “Losing my mother at such a young age, the trauma that I had, I was never really aware of it, I never talked about it, I repressed it, I never talked about it like most kids would. But then, as the trauma started to resurface, I wondered, “What’s going on? Now I feel everything, I’m no longer numb like before. My problem was that no one around me could help me.’

To unleash that “awakening”, also the modalities of the return to the homeland after Afghanistan. Few knew the prince’s mission, but eventually the secret was revealed, despite a confidentiality agreement between Buckingham Palace and some press outlets that knew. Harry, thus, became a target, so much so that he also received death threats. The decision to have him go home was inevitable, also in order not to endanger those around him.

It’s not the first time that Harry has talked about the mental disease, still perceived as a stigma to be ashamed of in many sectors, including the military. And this is the most authentic message of her new job, the second for Netflix after the much more scandalous Harry & Meghan. the Heart of Invictus it is a less sensationalist story, however pervaded by the same background noise, that absence never filled which remains an open wound, the deepest of his life.