Prince Harry has revealed how he struggled with his mental health after returning from Afghanistan, detailing his “unravelling” as he dealt with trauma from the military service and the earlier death of his mother.
His candid revelation came as he spoke about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the effects of being in a warzone in his new Netflix documentary series Heart of Invictus.
The five-part series launched at 8am on the streaming service on Wednesday, part of the £80m deal the Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan have with Netflix, was filmed by a camera crew who covered Harry and Meghan’s visit to the 2022 Invictus Games in the Netherlands.
Speaking about his own personal experience of trauma, the Duke of Sussex said: “Look, I can only speak to my own experience but from my tour of Afghanistan in 2012, flying Apaches, somewhere after that there was an unravelling.
“And the trigger for me was actually returning from Afghanistan but the stuff that was coming up was from 1997 from the age of 12.
“Losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma I had I was never aware of.”
The Prince was aged just 12 when his mother Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.
In an apparent swipe at the Royal Family, he maintained it was made all the harder for him because he did not have a support network at home to help him deal with it.
“The biggest struggle for me was no one around me really could help”, he said. “I didn’t have that support structure, that network or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me.”
And he said he only turned to therapy when he reached rock bottom.
“Unfortunately, like most of us, the first time you consider therapy is when you are lying on the floor in the foetal position probably wishing you had dealt with some of this stuff previously”, he said. “And that’s what I really want to change.”
He pinpointed an event, which he didn’t disclose, when he was 28 years old which became the catalyst for his trauma to manifest itself.
“It wasn’t until later in my life aged 28 there was a circumstance that happened that the first few bubbles started coming out and then suddenly it was like someone shook and it went ‘poof'”‘ – and then it was chaos”, he said. “My emotions were sprayed all over the wall everywhere I went and I was like, ‘How the hell do I contain this?'”.
But he said one of the things he was most proud of was the talks he gave to those inside the military to raise awareness of mental health issues in the forces.
“If there is a stigma within the military there will be a stigma within society. If we really want to cure the stigma in society then we need to lead the way,” he said.
The former army captain is seen in the series talking to participants of the Invictus Games, which the Duke founded in 2014 for wounded, injured and sick servicemen and women both serving and veterans.
He reveals his anger at being pulled from his Afghanistan deployment when his service their was revealed by the media. “To suddenly be on the way home – I was angry,” he said.
However, he also admits to his friends and fellow veterans JJ Chalmers and David Wiseman during a hike near his family home in Montecito, California that he never wanted to be serving in the Armed Forces once he had children.
“I’ve always had myself down as being the dad that I could never be, serving while having kids,” he said.
The 38-year-old and his wife Meghan have two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
The Duchess of Sussex makes only brief appearances in the show, at one time she is seen introducing her husband at the opening of the Invictus Games last year.
Speaking to the competitors, he said: “If your goal was to make your country proud, you’ve done it…If your goal was to make your family happy, you’ve achieved it.
“You are people of substance, of resilience, of strength. You have the heart of Invictus.”
The docu-series launch comes ahead of the start of this year’s Games being staged in Düsseldorf next month.
Prince Harry is expected to be in Germany for the games, where he will be joined by Meghan.
