Does Meghan's mental health message help anyone? Credit: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
Back in the days when they were still speaking to one another, the Cambridges and the Sussexes collaborated on a short video made for the mental health campaign Every Mind Matters. Over moody black and white video, cut with shots of celebrities staring meaningfully into the camera, Meghan Markle describes a suite of online self-care resources that offer a “new way to turn things around” when “we feel stressed, low, anxious, or have trouble sleeping”, while Princes Harry and William assure us that “everyone knows that feeling, when life gets on top of us”.
“Everyone”? Yes, that’s the claim. And that includes members of the royal family. Markle used her Oprah interview to tell the world about the depth of unhappiness she experienced when she was pregnant with her son Archie.
“I just didn’t want to be alive any more. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought… I went to the institution, and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help… And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”
Thrust into a (frequently hostile) media spotlight, estranged from her father and sister, and living far away from her mother and old friends during her pregnancy, it’s not surprising that Meghan felt distressed. What is surprising is the implication that she was disallowed from accessing psychiatric care, given Prince William’s particular interest in mental health as a campaigning issue, and the fact that Prince Harry has spoken publicly about his own mental health difficulties. Prince Charles, Princess Margaret, and Princess Diana were all known to have seen therapists.
The younger royals — and now Merkle — have been enthusiastic participants in this broader discourse on mental health, which relies on a definition of mental illness that is both expansive and depoliticised. Everyone is encouraged to be more emotionally open in reaction against the ‘stiff upper lip’ adopted by the queen’s generation — but little attention is paid to the issues of wealth, class, and access to scarce public resources.
Rather than seeing disclosure as the first step towards seeking treatment, this newly popular model understands disclosure to be a form of treatment in and of itself — in fact, the more public the disclosure, the better. Jo Hemmings, a self-described “media psychologist”, spoke on LBC radio on Tuesday to honour Meghan Markle’s own efforts in this regard, saying that: “it was extremely healthy to share it with the entire world” because “she needs the world to listen to her… she’s just taking talking therapy to its extreme”.
She has been described as “brave” by the White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki. And the mental health charity Mind tweeted out a statement acknowledging that although “opening up in this way can be really difficult… when high profile people talk about these experiences, it helps to break down the stigma around mental health issues.”
And yet it’s not at all clear what negative consequences Markle was risking in speaking about her history of depression. One of the very few public figures to have questioned her account, Piers Morgan, received more than 41,000 complaints to Ofcom, was immediately rebuked by his co-host, and has since stepped down from his position at Good Morning Britain. It seems that, on this issue at least, the public are determinedly sympathetic towards Markle.
Not all disclosures of mental illness would be greeted with such (almost) unanimous support. Historically, celebrities who have confess to having recovered from common and invisible mental health problems like anxiety and depression are far better received than those whose displays of illness are more public and alarming – think of Britney Spears shaving her head, Michael Jackson bleaching his skin, or Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s sofa.
In a 2018 Guardian article about her own experiences of mental illness, the journalist Hannah Jane Parkinson writes of a very particular style of “opening up”:
“In recent years the discussion around mental health has hit the mainstream. I call it the Conversation. The Conversation is dominated by positivity and the memeification of a battle won… it tends to focus on depression and anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder. It is less comfortable with the mental illnesses deemed more unpalatable – people who act erratically, hallucinate, have violent episodes or interpersonal instability.”
The Conversation shies away from conditions that are disturbing, destructive, and very clearly not curable through disclosure alone. In some rare instances, there are forms of mental distress from which people never recover, and to which the only solution is heavy medication and institutionalisation. The Conversation doesn’t know what to do about those.
Instead, the focus is on those forms of mental illness that are really just extreme manifestations of universal forms of emotional distress, like sadness and worry. Imagine the response if Markle had confessed to suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, or borderline personality disorder, or if her perinatal mental illness had manifested, not in an urge to hurt herself, but instead an urge to hurt her baby. It is one thing to admit to a depressive illness that is now passed. It is quite another to admit to a permanent condition that is liable to produce frightening and poorly understood symptoms like psychosis.
But only a small minority of psychiatric diagnoses fall into this category. In England, Mind reports that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year, overwhelmingly either depression or anxiety, and although there is little evidence to suggest that antidepressants work better than a placebo, more than one in ten people are now taking them. For Conversation enthusiasts, these figures should be understood as positive — a sign that we are finally “opening up” about private suffering, and thereby waking up to the true prevalence of mental illness.
But few proponents of this approach ever pause to reflect on whether this kind of radical openness actually does lead to improvement. Given that suicide rates in the UK have reduced only slightly in the last 40 years, and have actually increased in the US, while rates of non-fatal self injury have shot up, it’s certainly not obvious that the new model is any more effective than the old one.
And while the expansiveness of the Conversation may potentially serve to destigmatise, it also serves to obscure. This week, the journalist and mental health campaigner Bryony Gordon described mental illness as a “great leveller”, affecting prince and pauper alike. But while it is of course true that the highly privileged do sometimes experience mental illness, this is a category of disease that is closely tied to societal conditions that both create and aggravate distress — and the Conversation, with its preference for talking therapy over material change, cannot accommodate that kind of analysis.
When we lump together depressed duchesses and schizophrenic homeless people into the same category of “the mentally ill” — a category that, in any given year, will apparently contain fully a quarter of us — precise analysis becomes impossible. A graphic on a government website reporting that “50% of people seen sleeping rough had mental health needs”, for instance, is now unintelligible. Does this mean that half of rough sleepers are in urgent need of being sectioned? Or would their problems be solved by relocating to California and “speaking their truth”?
A key participant in the Conversation, Heads Together — an organisation spearheaded by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and intermittently supported by Prince Harry — aims to “tackle stigma and change the conversation on mental health”, with the solutions presented all orientated around deliberately uncontroversial forms of education, generally through digital means.
Which is unsurprising, given that Prince William, as a future head of state, is required to maintain political neutrality. So although his campaigning work is no doubt sincerely meant, it is also obliged to be anodyne. It can’t mention issues like class or government policy. It can’t even demand increased funding for NHS services. It is necessarily limited to platitudinous statements which do destigmatise — albeit in a very limited way — but which also flatten and distract. The public response to Markle’s disclosure is entirely in keeping with the Conversation, which — with celebrity and royal assistance — has succeeded in normalising a very narrow band of mental illnesses, but has also stripped away any semblance of political critique.
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SubscribeBryony Gordon, slapper, one time binge drinking, fat, compulsive, unstable, attention-seeking, fast life history strategist who would, no doubt have made an excellent barmaid, why bring her into it? Oh yes, it’s because we are not allowed to make judgements anymore, so who better to explain the feelings, so much more important than anything else, of another narcissistic, paranoid, attention seeking, unstable, sleazy, divorcée, and conclude the suffering of a millionaire gold digger is no different to the suffering of a poverty stricken, brutalised, terrified person living in mortal fear.
Thank you Alison for my first chuckle of the day.
#MeToo
Oi!
You mean You WONT put us males into 6pm Curfew like Greeny Jenny jones ,another libertarian NOT….?
Thank you for saying everything I have always wanted to say about Bryony Gordon. I once had a subscription to the DT, but she drove me away.
Never able to comment on her “articles” (I am being kind). I get the impression that she is the daughter of someone important at the Tegelrath. Just Like a number of other double-barrelled poshos…. you should see “Saturday”, it’s like a public school roll-call.
Yes, the rampant nepotism, along with the number of double-barrelled names and the scale of the poshness, were among the reasons I ceased to fund the MSM in any way whatsoever.
Exactly the same here. And now the DT are offering themselves almost for free to my email inbox. Even that is too much.
Gordon is a God-awful woman and typical of too many at the broadsheets now. I have completely given up on them and the BBC amd am happier and better informed all round. 🙂
Not the daughter of anyone at the DT. Her dad, Jack Gordon, is or was (I don’t know if he still with us) a journalist cum PR man. A nice chap with a fund of good stories. I often wonder what he thinks of his daughter’s output.
Should she expect to receive a Christmas card from you this year ?
I’m an Australian, so have no idea who Bryony Gordon is. But after reading you’re description, I can’t wait to meet her.
How lovely to see that in print, my thoughts exactly. Can’t even read the headlines to her articles now.
Meghan said that her father had done something unforgiveable ( publicity shots showing him in his wedding suit) and that she would never do that to Archie. No she just did something a million times worse she has told millions she was willing to kill herself ,while pregnant -and by extention her child. There are women so desperate to keep a pregnancy that they stay in hospital for the full term, usually lying in bed. Yet apparently Meghan is ‘brave’-the new President Biden says so.
What woman would confess to millions on TV to thinking about killing her unborn child? What woman would escape racism by upping sticks and moving to America? What woman would say she craves privacy then do a globally televised interview with (her good friend) Opera Winfrey? What woman in her position would survive 5 minutes being interviewed with the likes of Andrew Neil? It’s all a part of Megan’s classic strategy of divide and conquer, she’s splitting Harry’s family through spite and anger. She’ll never get top billing in the UK and by gad sir she’ll never courtesy to Kate whilst ever she has breath in her body. I’m with Trump on this: Good luck Harry your going to need it with this one mate.
To be honest, I’ve been thinking that I cannot wait for the time when she has to curtsey to Kate; I so hope I’m still around to see that!!
Me too and as an American I loathe the idea of curtsying. But I’d pay money to see her do it.
According to polis The Sussexes have popularity just above ”Child murderers” -30% so sharing isn’t popular in uK as Itv,ch4,BBC think …I feel genuine sympathy for people with ‘genuine’ Mental anguish,but however pR advised The Woke twosome,have got it Spectacularly wrong!
Seriously. And who moves from Vancouver Island to LA in order to feel safer? It’s beyond strange how many people accept her transparent lies.
Bullseye!
Haha. Inadvertently true, I’ll bet: she probably will “never courtesy” to Kate either.
At what point did unhappiness become reclassified as mental illness? I’m not downplaying genuine depression: the utter misery which makes someone unable to function, I’ve seen it firsthand. But nowadays the general ennui that comes from an unsatisfying job (or an argument with your sister in law) seems to have morphed into a medical condition that requires treatment, and frankly is regarded as a badge of honour to mark your victimhood
Unhappiness became reclassified as mental illness about 45 years ago in the 1970s when the benzodiazapenes ( valium, Librium etc) got a bad reputation and were heavily criticised and the pharmaceutical companies had to find another drug to sell. To do this they invented “ Depression” called it a mental illlness and went on very successfully to this day to sell about £50 billion of anti- depressants. Their logic was impeccable – you can’t sell anti – depressants without an illness called Depression to cure. So sadness, unhappiness, despair, frustration etc became mental illnesses. The psychiatrists were more than happy to go along with this because at last they had an illness they could cure with their prescription pad. In Japan where the benzos never went out of fashion hardly any anti depressants are sold.
I’m a member of the “General Public”, and I didn’t buy into, or have sympathy with, the idea of “public sharing”, quite frankly I couldn’t care less, it’s ALL ABOUT the narcissistic self, and in this case, it would appear, revenge.
If Meghan has mental health issues then I could certainly imagine that she might be suffering, with some justification, from paranoia, that everyone wants a “bit” of her. The question is, does the thought of being persecuted make someone, suffering from paranoia, increasingly paranoid and therefore an untrustworthy narrator of events ?
I wonder if the old idea of stoicism works at least as well as the current fad for “sharing”.
Sharing pays more.
Indeed! ( Ker-ching!)
Probably better in the long term. The old saying of ‘least said, soonest mended’ doesn’t seem to cut in this age of self centredness
“Old stoicism”! What, didn’t you know? Enlightenment is practically brand new.
It was first successfully synthesized around the time the first millennials were born and went into production in 1990.
Damned reactionary.
There isn’t enough airtime for everyone to benefit from that kind of public sharing.
And anyway, there should be a priority list starting with people who have suffered the most traumatic events such as being bombed.
Most of those people need the bombs though. Those are freedom bombs.
Princess Spakle Pony, as I call her, is a bit of an attention junkie, isn’t she? She courts publicity whist simultaneously complaining about it.
I think Meghan’s paranoid that now she’s no longer a princess, we might forget who she is.
I do think that people who talk about their mental health issues are brave. But with Meghan…she may well have suffered, I don’t deny it. But the whole disclosure smacks too much of the commercialisation of that pain which doesn’t sit well with me.
I’ve had my brushes with not being okay mentally so it’s good that the stigma is being dismantled. But I resent that a disclosure is so obviously being used to market the discloser. It’s tasteless.
It can, surely, only be brave when it carries some risk of negative consequence, perhaps related to big ticket items such as how your employer / authorities / nearest and dearest might react. That’s the missing bit for me, where was the risk for Meghan? Worryingly, it appears the opposite is true; you in fact gain social capital by ‘bravely’ confessing your mental health issues ( – nb. only a certain type is allowable).
In the real world, if we’re having a bravery olympics then one might conclude it was far braver of Piers Morgan to say he didn’t believe her.
Pain and suffering (real or imagined) is the new currency of power in a world where stoicism is no longer highly treasured but looked upon as a kind of emotional stuntedness. How are we going to sort out the big problems like climate change if we are all busy navel-gazing and “sharing” our latest pain? I thought Morgan was the braver party (even though I can’t stand him). I’m currently discovering the unpleasant consequences in my own circle of friends that comes from clearly saying “just because you claim racism and mental health problems, this does not exempt you from criticism or questioning.” most of this comes from the typical “be kind” thugs that lay into Boris Johnson when he says something which is inaccurate and are too dim to see the contradiction.
Completely agree. Really I think it has little to do also with what people actually think. You have an approved canon of responses that’s engineered purely for social media, against which it’s too pointless and/or exhausting to disagree. But my experience is often those same people who exhibit maximum outrage / shaming / policing of correct opinions on SM, not only are they (a) utter hypocrites usually but (b) get a couple of glasses of wine in them and they don’t really believe that sh*t anyway.
Stoicism seems to be an alien concept for the younger generation. There’s a great Geoff Norcott scene where he’s giving his comedy routine to a bunch of Uni students, during which (in a piece on health and safety) he jokes “maybe the problem is that you need to be a bit more careful next time?” The students look at him with an expression that goes beyond even disgust, to a blank faced incomprehension. It is like they have been unplugged 😀
I do still take on the SM dummies every now and then…if anything just to stand up and do my tiny, tiny bit to put out other opinions in what’s otherwise an echo chamber.
I subscribe to the NYT for no other reason.
Most of my comments, however, do not pass muster with the TAs in charge. They throw them in the garbage.
“I thought Morgan was the braver party (even though I can’t stand him).”
He spends a year spouting utter drivel and being cheered for it, and as soon as he says something I agree with, he’s out on his ear faster than a Man U fan at a meeting of the Man City Supporters’ Club.
True.
I agreed. Moreover, I don’t want to “feel”her pain – unless I’m wearing surgical gloves!
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Cf. Maj. Dennis Bloodnok (i.e. Peter Sellers as a Goon): “Get your hands off me! Do you want to catch something?”
If Harry and Meghan are truly interested in and empathetic to those with mental illness, I would suggest that they take a trip from their 14 million dollar home and travel to downtown LA – or I would be happy to escort them for a trip around the streets of Portland. If anyone wants to see what TRUE mental illness looks like, you won’t find it on any show Oprah hosts but it is there on almost every street in both of those cities and there is NO ONE who cares and no resources to house or treat them. This is the real tragedy of mental illness.
To quote Meatloaf, you took the words right out of my mouth.
We know that she lied about two things:
1.) That the “prince” title was held back on racist grounds.
2.) That they got married before the public ceremony.
She apparently registered a complaint with a TV station over someone claiming to disbelieve her.
She has protested that a discussion of her accusations of racism between white guys was broadcast (would she prefer that white guys have separate drinking fountains?).
Moreover, she clearly had no clue about the boundaries of acceptable public pronouncements from the royal family. I don’t mind the royal family making anodyne public statements about “community” or “connecting with family” or “thinking of others.” I deeply resent them using their position to make overtly political statements – as this absurd woman did once she’d shown up on the stage.
She is clearly an entitled, narcissistic bore, who should be dismissed as irrelevant. However, a disquieting amount of media attention is being paid to her ramblings. It is a terrible indictment of our culture that the dribblings of third-rate actress are considered newsworthy simply because she is pretty enough to have bedded a public figure.
She also, it seems, lied about having her passport taken away and not being allowed to go on holiday. Apparently she went on holiday on numerous occasions, while lecturing the rest of us on climate change etc. They are truly disgusting people, even by the standards of our truly disgusting governing and celebrity class.
Fraser, dear – I do think that sometimes you are a little Eeyorish in your opinions…but the final sentence is spot on (I can’t be bothered to check for myself whether the statements you refer to that M made are true or false and will withhold judgment accordingly). My skin has been a-crawl all week about this – a whole swarm of bees in my bonnet. I am completely d’accord.
As I’ve said several times this week, I found Donald Trump dreadful. Nasty, uncouth, vulgar. But at least he was quite openly nasty, uncouth, and vulgar. You knew what you were getting because it wasn’t wrapped up in some hypocritical candy pink wrapper of being “compassionate and kind”. In that way, he was more honest than Ginge & Whinge who sell themselves as the salt of the earth.
Trump at least Would talk to Prince,millionaire,or hat check Girl..He has been ridiculously hated by our mainstream Media,CBS,ABC,CNN,Itv,bBC,ch4 Observer *&Gates,Soros Globalist foundations,thats main reason i liked him,he is Also A Peacenik( Middle East peace treaty,Overtures to north korea,bringing 1000s of troops home)) ,tried to drain the Swamp
She’s been spending too much time with Omid Scobie, making things up. We’ve done what we usually do as a tolerant nation, listened, smiled politely and had enough.
‘This week, the journalist and mental health campaigner Bryony Gordon described mental illness as a “great leveller”, affecting prince and pauper alike.’
Bryony Gordon is the single biggest reason why so many of us gave up on the DT. Personally I’ve had enough of this stuff, and I certainly don’t want to read about it in relation to privileged frauds like ‘ginge and whinge’.
It is a mystery why the DT employs her. I understand it’s never possible to comment on her articles (I never read them), probably because they all said please, for everyone’s sake, stop publishing this one time binge drinking, fat, compulsive, unstable, attention-seeking slapper.
A sad and frustrated Dutches complaining so publicly (and profitably) about her alleged lack of attention and support does immeasurable damage to the cause of real mental health. Real, grinding, debilitating mental health where no medical or family and social support is available. None of these applied to Markel. People get sad. That’s part of the human condition. Her behaviour has caused a great many of her and her husbands family to also become sad. They won’t be mentally ill as a result.
We are spectators as society becomes more infantilized and narcissistic.
It is a dreadful burden when a person experiences a mental health issue. Which is why it is beyond despicable to lie about it for the purposes of personal advancement.
Poor little rich Duchess. Sorry, but I don’t buy any of it. Even if we take her public whinge at face value (which I don’t), airing your feelings in public is just so Me Me Me Me Meghan.
Far better to put on a brave face in public and deal with your demons in private (or with your therapist if necessary).
When I read that Meghan said she ‘went to the institution’ to get help, I assumed that meant she had checked into a psychiatric hospital or something. Had she done so, with (I hope) the support of a sympathetic husband, there would have been nothing but sympathy for her. But then I realised ‘the institution’ was the Royal Family. Depersonalised of course, she didn’t ask so-and-so, she asked ‘the institution’. And, of course, was rebuffed. That strains credibility, and that’s where she loses my sympathy.
Her husband has a therapist, her mother was a therapist. I find it odd that she went to an ‘institution’. Whatever she actually means by that.
She could have just called her GP and asked him for a therapist or a psychiatrist.Why go to the “institution”, whatever that means? Why can’t her own husband help her?
“Imagine the response if Markle had confessed to suffering from…. borderline personality disorder”
She kind of did.
The two recurrent topics in Megan Markel’s staged interview were racism and mental health, issues with special appeal for the woke praetoriam guard media. The only person she mentioned by name was Kate, one clue leading inexorably to the next interview, when Meghan will reveal that Kate was the person behind the doubts about Archie’s skin color. Premeditated perfidy, envy, and moral laziness are put to the service of the desperate need to convince Nextflix’s and Spotify’s bosses that Meghan and her poodle husband deserve the money they are giving them.
“It seems that, on this issue at least, the public are determinedly sympathetic towards Markle.”
Seriously? I’ve yet to speak to a single person who does not want to see them stripped of royal privilege. This pair have made it abundantly clear that they are unsuitable candidates. They do not represent the values of the peoples of the UK.
I agree with Piers – falsehoods being traded for cash is what I see here.
Wonder why they were not paid for the interview then?
No thirty pieces of silver, they did it just for revenge? Even worse!
No, they did it for billionairess,neighbour Oprah,sold to 70 countries for Approximately $100million, shows drivel passes for broadcasting nowadays..
They said that, did they? Then I suppose it might well be true.
speaking their truth
Ah, I love that term that Oprah used. But what did she mean?
Oprah is completely aware of the wave/particle duality exhibited by electrons, showing that the universe, in the end, is too complex for our limited brains. So, as Pilate asked, what is truth?
OR
Oprah was implying that Meghan is probably lying.
Which is closer? Or is there something more appropriate? That, dear reader, is your truth.
Should truth reflect the facts or be entirely subjective even when facts are available?
Oprah has used that term ‘speaking your truth’ for years. She uses it earnestly and without a hint of irony.
Why do her audience not realise she is talking of subjective truth such as ‘ mushrooms are awful,’ or ‘it’s so hot today’? Is she deliberately trying to be misleading? (I write from the UK and have never seen her show)
It makes for better, more entertaining stories. Meghan’s story is pretty good actually, as long as you don’t examine any facts. It’s the participation ribbon of truth.
Could it absolve her in case of a libel lawsuit?
Oprah has previous for “her truth” as evidenced by her own dishonest and bullying behaviour towards a store assistant in the Zurich handbag incident.
Keeps USA Whiplash willies (Lawyers) at bay??
Always reminds me of Indiana Jones: “Archaeology is the search for fact… not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.”
“50% of people seen sleeping rough had mental health needs”, for instance, is now unintelligible. Does this mean that half of rough sleepers are in urgent need of being sectioned? Or would their problems be solved by relocating to California and “speaking their truth”?
Priceless!
Mental illness frequently leads to homelessness. Never mind those people and save your fusillades of skepticism, if any, for elsewhere.
Emotional issues, such as when you leave family and country to live with a new spouse, exist to tell you that you need give yourself space, take your time, and come to an accomodation with the new circumstances.
They are personal, and should be kept that way.
We all go through these things.
In my youth Maghan’s style was called “Washing your dirty linen in public”
Narcissists use anyone who will listen to their so-called plight. We need to de-platform this couple. They play the victim when in reality they are arch manipulators. They also left the Royal family and yet still want royal status, funding and privilege. They should get a life rather than bore us with their hypocrisy.
I speculated elsewhere that Meghan may be suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder which, by the way, is not the same as being a narcissist and I wasn’t this levelling this as an insult. The response I got was, I thought, very telling. Apparently I should not have suggested this; it was “grotesque” speculation. I think that probably shows that stigma is alive and well around all disorders that aren’t just to do with sadness or anxiety. I bet no one would have complained had I speculated that Meghan had Antenatal Depression. Anyway, the fact is that treating mental illness usually takes a lot more than opening up about it – many illnesses are extremely hard to treat. I’ve had one for over 25 years and I don’t expect a cure at this point.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is basically impossible to crack. I suspect you are right on Megan as not a l.c. narcissist (who isn’t?) but an u.c. case of NPD. As described to me by a practitioner (I have one of these NPDs in my family):
“. . . narcissistic controlling personality: The controlling sibling/person believes it is their right to do as they wish to other family members—especially elderly parents—as their internal need to dominate overwhelms all other considerations. This domination trait usually results from a core sense of entitlement stemming from their perception of not being honored enough within the family. Your sister not only believes she is right—it doesn’t matter to her if she is or is not correct. She demands to win all the time, from the pettiest to the most grave issues. She knows no other instinct except self-survival. If you can trigger that instinct, she will respond to that cue. Petitioning her sense of decency, empathy, or fairness are exercises in futility. And she knows how to game the systems in place.”
This sounds a lot like Madame M to me. I don’t know the ins and out of Megan’s family of origin, but her need to “own” her mother and exclude her other siblings and basically control them and others is also a marker of the syndrome. Lying about things that can be easily verified is another. I sure feel sorry for Harry. He doesn’t understand what he has got himself into. Like others, I predict this will not end well.
I’ll add to this that in the Middleton family, Pippa did get to share the spotlight with her sister, even at the second rung, and in the end made a decent marriage. Of course all of these people are extremely privileged so no tears for them and—Who cares? But family dynamics are always interesting, especially sibling dynamics. So observing Madame M’s performance does prompt a little look-back at the Kate-Pippa dynamic, and Kate comes off fairly well as an elder sister.
Hadn’t really considered this in the context of MM’s latest public foray. I was aware that MM had deeply dysfunctional relationships with most of her family, and a bit of an odd one with her mother, Doria Ragland, who – as has been pointed out on here – was a therapist and therefore, one would have thought, quite well placed to offer a therapeutic bolt hole for Meghan. Contrasting all that with the evidently well functioning Middleton household is telling. Kate was, essentially, well brought up in a stable nuclear family. Meghan wasn’t. It shows.
Well, actually, the Meghan creature has a different mother to her half-siblings. Same father, different mothers. It is only M. who is half Afro-American; her half-siblings are not as they have a white mother.
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Wow, talk about blind (or, only seeing what you want to see).
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The press was ‘frequently hostile’? You must have been reading different papers to the rest of us.
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A clearly organised pile-on of ‘complaints’ re. Morgan means that ‘the public are determinedly sympathetic towards Markle.’ Wowsers. Your bias has blinded you.
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40,000 complaints.
200,000 signed petition to have him reinstated. Go figure.
Indeed. Morgan won’t be short of job offers, nor is he short of people indicating that although they mostly can’t stand him, they largely agree with what he said.
Where is the petition??? I wanna sign it.
I am not a huge fan of either the royal family or Piers, but let’s just be fair here. We must push back against mob thinking, which seems to be driving so much “opinion” these days. The idea of caving in to mob demands to cancel Morgan because he expressed his opinion is much worse than anything he could have said.
Here is one:
https://www.change.org/p/good-morning-britain-keep-piers-morgan-on-gmb-for-his-common-sense-approach-to-life?use_react=false
its Closed Around 200,000 signed. Piers has already said pastures Anew call, maybe going for horse oprah stint in LA?
I think the author might find that ‘on this issue’ the public are not on the side of , to use her half sisters description, ‘Princess Pushy’. 41000 complaints do not speak for Britain and I expect that for the other 67 million , their ‘truth’ is nearer to ‘ I really don’t care less about her ‘ . What I don’t get one bit is why Princess Pushy and husband didn’t just phone a Dr – do all calls get vetted by some being in the ‘Institution’? I think not and tend to agree very much with Morgan . It all a load of vindictive invention by the two people who seem intent on alienating their families
200k have signed a petition on Change.org to have Morgan reinstated.
Just had a look and it’s about 45k. A few copycat petitions there have 1 or 2k votes each.
Aside from a rather weak “I suffer just like the peasants” reference to mental illness the entire affair is just another celebrity train wreck.
What continually strikes me about these episodes is how they drive home a universal constant of the narcissistic celebrity class: none of them seem to have any true friends.
Loads of sycophants, aiders, abettors and camp followers but apparently no one they can trust to provide what only real true friends can which is that reality check slap in head we all need if and when when we get an urge to saddle up and ride into Stupid City.
Between them Megarry have met with, talked to and know on more than a casual basis, more people than the proletariat could imagine. They’ve had access to leaders, mentors and peers in politics, the military, entertainment and education the world over and yet apparently weren’t able to develop one true friendship out of the entire bunch.
One true friend that would have advised, in that “Don’t be an idiot” fashion that only true friends can, that trashing your own family armed with nothing more than vague ‘self-truths’ supported by verifiably false ‘facts’ was probably not a wise thing to do. That such an endeavour would not be any help to your own well-being (aside from financial gain) and could very well be hurtful to people you profess to care about.
Then again, perhaps my sympathy is misplaced. Maybe they think they don’t need that kind of friend. Maybe no one they know wants to be that kind of friend.
I suspect the latter.
Thanks; a well written and important article. These recent events take the focus away from the real crisis facing the mentally ill and risk diverting funds and aid from the poor, disadvantaged and seriously unwell to the wealthy, connected and mildly unwell.
So right, Alan!
Beware the Elf! ‘Health and Safety’ began as a good thing and saved many lives. It then became a bandwagon and a gravy train and, in parody, became known as ‘Elf & Safety’.
Similarly, the exploration and more open discussion of mental health started as a good thing. It has now become a flag to wave in a whole spectrum of circumstances, many of which are simply normal human experiences – part of the Human Condition.
I was amused to hear an actress claim recently: “I’ve got mental elf too.” I think she meant the opposite, that she has mental illness. Whatever, beware the Elf!
It has got to the point where what we used to call unhappiness – a perfectly natural and frequent part of life – has now been renamed mental illness. Meghan Markle was – unsurprisingly – made unhappy by being cut off from friends and family, plunged into an unfamiliar and very public life in a foreign country, and then coping with the stresses of a first pregnancy on top of all that. Anyone in her situation would have been profoundly upset and unhappy, particularly a young woman used to – and I would guess fond of – being in control of her life. But that is not, surely, the same as being mentally ill.
Really? Unhappy to have achieved what she wanted and to be pregnant at last? Speculating about the appearance of a coming infant is perfectly normal—especially among POC! What is not normal is latching on to a particular utterance and then continuing to beat the dead horse forever. Many a husband has had to live with eternal verbal recriminations and damnation for one minor transgression.
As a member of a family where Mental Illness has manifested itself regularly over many years, I feel quite annoyed by people who bandy about the term Mental Illness when they are probably suffering from a period of sadness or dissatisfaction in their lives. Real Mental Illness can destroy lives and lead to loneliness and misery. Many people today have become so self-obsessed that they appear to believe that they should live in a state of eternal happiness. Sadly life isn’t like that.
Judging by the number of internet memes circulating I suggest the British public is anything but supportive of MM.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/03/12/public-opinion-harry-and-meghan-falls-new-low-afte
You Gov agrees. Most interesting to me is the clear steady loss of public support since 2018.
Too right
As someone who is Indian and married to a white English person said :’ we both wondered what colour our baby would be. Oh god, does that make us and all our family and friends racists’?
Meghan and Harry have lost the plot and become truly desperate for attention. I suggest that they seek help before they fall into a black vortex, blinded by praise but walking ever further into an emptiness
“Mailed to an English white person” bet the Royal Mail charged a pretty penny!!!
Indeed, as someone ethnically white British and married to a Chinese, there was much speculation when she was pregnant as to my daughter’s skin tone and general appearance, and intense post-natal scrutiny of same! All of the speculation came from my Chinese in-laws and I never gave it a moment’s thought. At what shade on the Pantone scale does it become offensive to speculate about the skin colour of the progeny of mixed marriages?
So ”The Matrix” exists after all?…You Truth, Your reality…
I would hazard a guess that most of us who see this ghastly circus as reflecting badly on Meghan and Harry are over 35! Apparently responses are sharply divided by age, with many younger folk believing them and sympathising with their ‘plight’ Another case of the inter-generational divide which seems to be opening up over this, and so many other things in society?
Guess older people experienced plenty of suffering and disappointments in their life, which they had to overcome. In time young people will learn that it doesn’t help, if you only emote and complain. Reality will catch up with them.
In which case the Unherd readership appears to be exclusively over 35. Of the 61 comments to date a big fat zero are actually in support of her.
“In which case the Unherd readership appears to be exclusively over 35.”
I’m guessing that’s very close to the truth.
Am I unwell every time I feel glum ?
Your truth?…;)
Thank you for this article. The dilution of the notion “mental illness” is medically unhelpful for those with conditions that need stronger interventions than therapy. The dilution leads to NHS “crisis teams” recommending “colouring-in”, “watching a comedy”, and “having a nice cup of tea” to people who are, for instance, experiencing psychosis. There is unfortunately a very real cost to celebrities reducing stigma in this way. It makes those with severe mental illnesses have to compete for limited NHS resources with people who don’t need clinical interventions. The reflex GP recommendations for treatment of any mental illness has become mindfulness and prozac (both of which can have deleterious outcomes for patients with certain more critical disorders) while patients that really need intervention pronto are put on a months-long waitlist to see a psychiatrist for a diagnosis.
The BBC this morning =Today programme- was big on back to school. Robinson kept emoting about Mental problems for the children. Soon they were talking to two children. Both of whom were far more articulate than the highly paid BBc presenters – and while nodding in the direction of mental lockdown stress- were completely together, on the ball and refreshing.
It seems the Media are trying to talk this issue up.
From the Spectator’s Dominic Green. “Their kind of fact-light, sentiment-heavy self-promotion and self-therapy was, Psaki told us, one of the areas that Biden is ‘committed to in the future’.
Yes an Meghan’s narcissism and obsesseive attempts to wreck the royal family and Harry is so hen pecked he lets her way with it.
How in the name of all things holy can you state “the majority of the British public seem to sympathise with Megan” ??????. You appear to be confuse public opinion with Twitter!!!
I can well understand that Meghan was a bit miserable, living in the midst of her husband’s family, in a world she didn’t understand, far from friends and (the one member of her) family (she was still talking to). But that’s where my sympathy ends.
Was she too thick to do any research into her new life? Did Harry not talk to her about it? I don’t believe a word of it.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for this undertaking.
My intuition is that she was indeed given a series of fairly well-thought-out crash courses, but most of the material fell on deaf or unreceptive (or recalcitrant) ears.
Blame Shaw for popularizing the idea that anyone can just learn the ropes.
“…It seems that, on this issue at least, the public are determinedly sympathetic towards Markle.” And the 200,000+ signatures on petitions to have Morgan reinstated? Where do they belong on your one-way barometer of public opinion?
The point above about comparing MM’s mental health problems with those of the hallucinating, deluded, thought disordered schizophrenic is very well made. if you broaden the concept of mental illness to that degree it becomes more or less meaningless. She made a bad move, she regretted it, she was pissed off , she fixed it by getting Harry to leave his home and family to go with her to sunny California. Forget mental health problems – it’s a ruse to cover up the four sequential phrases above. Sadly though, it will never be properly fixed. There’s more to come.
Princess Diana quietly visited hospices and hospitals without any real publicity. She had her faults but unlike Meghan Markle, she understood that sometimes the most important work is done gently and genuinely away from the media. My take on Markle’s outbreak is nothing more than most of us do with our friends and family when life becomes stressful. Indeed she felt stress but as an actress in one of the most stressful environments, I think all she wanted to do was take out her anger for the British Royal Family and their traditions.
She is a political activist who wants and needs the limelight and she was thwarted in her biggest political gamble.
Suggest you look up Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It is quite enlightening when it comes to the character of the Duchess of Sussex.
All her staged therapy session did was to make everyone an online psychotherapist.
My diagnosis is narcissism fuelled by a fantasist mentality. Probably driven by a fusion of the American Dream with erotica notions of royalty.
What I’m waiting for is the Big Brother esque follow up so we can all chip in with her recovery programme.
Poor article. The duchess is the woke queen, unreliable and not believable. Her aim is to seek attention and damage others.
I personally can’t see how a staged therapy session is going to be positive for her mental health. She has unleashed upon herself millions upon millions of derisive thoughts. She is definitely going to need therapy and anti-depressants after that which is perhaps why we haven’t seen her since.
I find two things daunting, sinister, about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey.
[1] The failure of so many people, especially in America, to see the self-evident dishonesties (and insensitivities) in the positions there taken.
(a) The Duke and Duchess have waged a three-year war against media intrustion in their private lives. – So they go on TV to talk about painful elements in their private lives in front of 100 million viewers. Apparently the illogic of this is lost on multitudes.
(b) Prince Harry’s chief concern in life (according to him) is to prevent his wife being overtaken by the same fate which destroyed his mother. – So they give a television interview which, like that his mother starred in on “Panorama” in 1995, denounces the Royal Family, its court and servants, is inevitably very controversial, and whips up the press into a feeding frenzy; in consequence of which the paparazzi are liable to become frantic for pictures and chase them (as they did Princess Diana) like greyhounds everywhere. Apparently the illogic of this also is lost on multitudes.
(c) They talk about one person having made a racist remark, and the Family having failed to support them during much press criticism, as if no one else has had problems with the behaviour of family members. We see two multimillionaire interviewees questioned (all very favouringly and anodynely) by a billionairess and treated as worthy of great sympathy, Victims par excellence. This at a time when 40 million human beings in the USA have just lost their jobs owing to the Covid Pandemic lockdowns. The self-importance of such disproportionate thinking and conduct ought to stand out a mile; but it seems, and especially among the Americans, it doesn’t.
(d) Meghan, who I think (contrary to much other opinion) is a good actress, portrays herself as the innocent ingenue from a simpler world, the American way of life, than the hidebound British royal family. Yet she invited Oprah Winfrey to her wedding after having met her only one time previously – which looks like a calculated move to acquire favourable big publicity in future: hardly the act of a unspoiled artless girl with no strong dose of worldly self-seeking and self-advancement in her nature.
(e) The Duchess complains of such things as having to curtsey to her grandmother-in-law even when behind the scenes and meeting privately. If the courtiers did not brief her about royal protocol and the duties which would be expected of her in the event of her marrying Prince Harry, what was Harry doing, failing to apprise his bride-to-be of all that was entailed?
It’s like volunteering to be an astronaut and then being shocked at the requirement to get into a spacecraft and be projected to the Moon.
[2] The couple wail about their ‘powerlessness’; but the moment a leading TV pundit says he disbelieves the Duchess, he loses his job. Piers Morgan is no hero of mine, but I find the power of today’s rabid ochlocracy – the Twitter mob, the ‘woke’, the cancel-culture Jacobins – disgusting.
“Prince Harry’s chief concern in life (according to him) is to prevent his wife being overtaken by the same fate which destroyed his mother.”
Then all is going according to plan. She accurately sensed that this would be the way to bind him (and his wealth, and his fame, and his status) to her more securely than anything else possibly could.
Sly one, she is.
At what point does a fairly normal reaction to distressing circumstances get counted as mental illness? I thought a person with severe pressures in their life feeling stressed or anxious is the very opposite of mentally ill. In fact if they were sailing along calm & happy I’d have thought they were perhaps not completely all there.
We seem to have reached a stage where being contented is the only state of mind qualifying as healthy, and anything else requiring if therapy. Perhaps a prescription for Soma?
I enjoy the fact that my moods range from joy & contentment to worried and anxious depending in the challenges of my life. It make me feel like I react appropriately and do things to promote the nicer states, by making my life better. And no chemicals. And no opening up interviews either.
Everyone has personal issues to deal with, not many people care about others unless they 1. are closely related; 2. are a potential threat or benefit to you personally. I still don’t know what H&M hope to achieve by “flaunting” themselves. There are two possibilities regarding their technique of unbridled public interview – 1. personal mental release as the article suggests – very high risk; or 2. Maximum leverage creation in an ongoing negotiation over money and privileges with the Royal Family. I think their relationships with Charles and Kate, and by association, with William and The Queen must be at an all time low as a consequence and it will be difficult to mend those. There will be no guarantee that the Little Mermaid won’t keep talking now that she has her voice back and everyone else is being cast as Ursula.
I’m afraid I struggle to understand exactly what the term ‘mental health’ is supposed to mean. If it embraces everything from feeling a bit hacked off to paranoid schizophrenia it is, to the first order, meaningless. At what point do everyday concerns cross the boundary into ‘mental illness’ that can be treated? If I’m fed up to the back molars am I ill? I fear this constant refrain about ‘affecting our mental health’ may distract attention from the real problems associated with, for example, clinical depression and even more severe psychiatric problems.
Here is one definition of “mental illness”.
The five main warning signs of mental illness are as follows:
“Most mental health symptoms have traditionally been divided into groups called either ‘neurotic’ or ‘psychotic’ symptoms. ‘Neurotic’ covers those symptoms which can be regarded as severe forms of ‘normal’ emotional experiences such as depression, anxiety or panic. Conditions formerly referred to as ‘neuroses’ are now more frequently called ‘common mental health problems.’
Less common are ‘psychotic’ symptoms, which interfere with a person’s perception of reality, and may include hallucinations such as seeing, hearing, smelling or feeling things that no one else can. Mental health problems affect the way you think, feel and behave. They are problems that can be diagnosed by a doctor, not personal weaknesses.”
What is the legal definition of mental illness?
n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behaviour. Insanity is distinguished from low intelligence or mental deficiency due to age or injury.
What a sound article. Having worked on the fringes of mental health and seen what I’ve seen, I’ve often wondered why we assume all mental health issues are the same? It seems we cannot question someone who claims to have these “issues”, as they must be believed. Of course a pregnant MM had days when she felt fragile and even distressed and/or tired! Doesn’t every pregnant and hormonal woman? As the article says, had she really threatened to hurt the baby as an extension of self-harm, a doctor would and should have been called. Not sure I believe her either.
I like the Merkel typo.
Stress is perfectly normal. It is not mental illness. Depression is perfectly normal. It may also be a clinical condition, depending on the cause. Anyone joining the Royal Family and expecting it to change its ways and its very necessary rules about activities with a political dimension should expect to be stressed. That person’s expectations are utterly and completely unreasonable. Merkle persisted and refused to accept the rules that are in place for very good reasons. She is used to having her own way. Of course she found it stressful. but she is wrong to turn that into a denial of access to psychiatric help for which she made only insinuations and provided no evidence whatsoever (either because there is none or her lawyers advised her not to make any verifiable claims). Her story is simply not credible. It may be that she does have some psychiatric condition. If she believes she needs psychiatric help why has she not obtained it after leaving the UK, or if she has why not tell us about it – probably because she doesn’t need it? Normal people suffer stress and deal with it without needing psychiatric help. Why not Merkle?
If she has no psychiatric condition why doesn’t she just say that Royal life is not for her without constructing unverifiable claims in order to cast blame on others? That is just spite. Even when saying she knew nothing about Prince Harry or Royal life (a claim contradicted by her old friends) she says it as if this stupid lack of preparation and mindless lack of interest in one’s future family and the institution of the monarchy, is a virtue! that at least is consistent with wokeness constructing their truth in order to justify their ignorance and disregard for real and inconvenient truth.
Basically Merkle is not a very nice person. Far from there being a lack of truth among those she accuses of lying, the absence of truth permeates her interview with Winfrey like the smell of ullage water.
It’s Markle, not Merkle. The article does contain one typo.
I ain’t going to watch the thing, so can anyone tell me where was Harry while he was making his poorly wife talk to strangers employed by his family about her problems?
Was he too busy to have this conversation for her, in the role of protective, loving husband?
Are we supposed to imagine he said to her “Well Darling, if you are that depressed go and ask Lady in Waiting X if you can get a therapist”
At the dinner table that evening.. “Harry, I told her I don’t want to live anymore but she said no”
What kind of people are they!!!?
Does “this kind of radical openness actually […] lead to improvement”?
We ought to keep asking and asking this question.
At the risk of overestimating my own psychology education at a faculty of some renown, my reading on mental health in the many years since, and my limited direct and indirect experiences with psychiatry, I offer my belief that to some degree mental illness is contagious. Possibly the more we talk about it, the more people pass a tipping point into it.
The people hyping and cheerleading for the benefits of publicly ‘opening up’ about mental illness may simply be those whose profession gains social status from its elevation in importance, and those who just love how avenues of sanctimony open up when others make themselves more vulnerable to pitying dismissal.
The whole thing just goes a little too neatly along with victim culture, the curious celebration of weakness, and the idea that society is so shot through with suffering that it surely must be destroyed with quasi-maoist fervour and ‘built back better.’
I’d be less suspicious if public messaging was just about seriously boosting the pathetic level of funding for treatment (and letting the talk be between the afflicted and their treatment providers).
In other words, less Go Public, please, and more See Your Doctor, It’s Covered.
“I offer my belief that to some degree mental illness is contagious.”
no better proof of that than the many conservatives posting on these threads.
I have no time at all for all this moaning and whining about ‘mental health’.
Previous generations would have jeered anyone who came out with such a pile of narcissistic sewage.
Markle needs to pull herself together and get on with her life, which looks far from hard from where I am standing. Mind you, my mother was born one hundred year ago today and was the daughter of a man maimed on the Somme on July 1st 1916. Those boys had reason to be stressed and anxious – Meghan Markle? No – I’m having none of it. I note by the way that she has a very long history of massive fall outs with family and friends. This case is just one of many in her narcissistic parade of her victimhood.
So what youre saying is get rid of class/financial disparity/the haves(keep the have-nots) and mental illness will somehow disappear?
Speaking of The Conversation, it is unfortunate that here and elsewhere we see no awareness of the frequency and potential seriousness of pre-natal depression that is oftentimes hormonally based (The author mentions perinatal mental illness in passing) Too bad Markle also seems unaware of the phenomena. Had she or Oprah or others connected her experience to something wider and more generic it would have added some significance and purpose to her confessional.
You are assuming that Meghan is not lying from start to finish of course.
She is supposedly so close to her mother—why didn’t she turn to her mother for advice and support when she hit a few emotional bumps during her pregnancy?
Need a lift? Splash out a few quiet on a house!
“The younger royals — and now Merkle — have been enthusiastic participants in this broader discourse on mental health, which relies on a definition of mental illness that is both expansive and depoliticised.”
Why drag the German chancellor into this?
It’s Markle, not Merkle.
Public sympathy is limited to the mindless echo chamber of Twitter –
Most notably the Black Twitter brigade & the historically
Illiterate supine adolescents churned out from the mid 2000s No idea where they find the time, given they’re all having to work twice as hard as anyone else
Excellent analysis!
I enjoyed this piece, but it misses the historical context that more troubled and violent people were accommodated back in the day. This account of Norman Mailer’s getting a murderer out of prison, only for him to kill again, and indeed Mailer’s own behaviour, which wouldn’t go down well in these tamer (one could almost say “gelded” times.
https://nypost.com/2017/02/16/how-norman-mailer-helped-a-criminal-kill-again/
Gosh, I miss Mailer. All of it. Gore Vidal’s “Yet again, words fail Norman Mailer.” His peroration on farting in the opening of “The Armies of the Night” IIRC, his description of Ali sitting on the edge of the boxing ring in Kinshasa with his legs over the shoulders of the promoter Don King “like a witch doctor in stocks.”
However, I imagine most people prefer the present.
Frankly I’m amazed that very few people heard what she actually said. She asked for permission to go to some kind of facility and the PR guys (rightly) said that would be seriously bad press. She did not say she was refused help for mental issues. Which I’m sure was available, as it was for Harry, and William, and Charles.
The wrong storm in the wrong tea cup!
An important point made here.
The article implies PTSD is a socially acceptable mental health diagnosis but BPD is in another category altogether. Yet the NHS website info states “Traumatic events that occur during childhood are associated with developing BPD”. So BPD is often a manifestation of PTSD.
What about Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Is that acceptable. That’s what she’s got.
Louise this is the most perceptive piece I’ve seen on this silly saga. We can all coo over a pretty little princess, but many types of mental anguish show in ways that would make a mess of Oprah’s sofa, and no-one wants to see that.
Great article.
So I suppose you are now a “racist” along with Piers Morgan for challenging the Princess Story.
She has paler skin than I have. One set of my four sets of great grandparents were Italian.
The word we are all looking for is “dignity”. It left this country on the day Princess Diana died. Dignity in public life must be restored.
It might well be the case that the Duchess is not quite mentally herself. She is the mother of a toddler and is expecting again. Most women in that state can be difficult to deal with one way or another. It is not unhealthy but ‘normal’. A lot of her problems stem from the fact that while motherhood is a joy, it is also a huge restriction on your freedom. It takes time for most women who have led busy lives doing what they want to do to accept that. The fact that Harry has nothing useful to do at the moment makes it worse. Their attitude and behaviour make a really useful battering ram against freedom of speech as is so rightly pointed out. So brave souls must challenge it, having first checked their pension rights or got another job lined up.
quite something to see so many unherd scribblers auditioning for a PR spot at The Firm.