Prince William (36) has talked openly for the first time about his mental health struggles as a father at the This Can Happen conference in London earlier this week. William, his wife Kate (36) and Prince Harry (34) have raised millions already for mental health charities.
The Duke of Cambridge has previously spoken about the difficulties of working as an air ambulance pilot and the toll that the witnessing of traumatic incidents can have on one's psyche, but never before has he revealed just how much some of the things he saw affected him.
Since becoming a father himself, it was the jobs that involved children that left him feeling particularly shell-shocked, he confessed at the conference.
"The relation between the job and the personal life was what really took me over the edge. And I started feeling things that I’ve never felt before. And I got very sad and very down about this particular family,” he said. “You start to take away bits of the job and keep them in your body. And of course, you don’t want to share with your loved ones because you just don’t want to bring that sort of stuff home."
He went on to add, "so the only place you can talk about it is at work and if you don’t necessarily have the right tools or the right environment at work, you can see why things can snowball and get quite bad."
Prince William stated that he was delighted to hear that the military is now trying to factor in mental health in their various training programmes, so that military personnel can learn how to deal with the stress and pressure that goes hand in hand with so many army jobs. William highlighted the importance of taking mental health just as seriously as physical health.
