I especially find the comments here about Megan disclosing suicidal thoughts and seeking therapy very troubling.
I am a survivor of suicide, what it does to the family, the people left behind is devestating. I hope no one ever has to understand the pain of being a family survivor. We need to treat mental health with the respect it deserves. If someone discloses information about their mental health we owe them the benefit of the doubt and to take them seriously.
How DARE anyone make light of someone's mental health struggles... and accusing people of lying or being diisingenuous is exactly that.
So what exactly does someone who is struggling look like? Are they always obvious? Always poor...
No one expected Robin Williams to kill himself... Kate Spade... Anthony Bourdain.
Bingo. It just goes to show how stigmatized it still remains.
Nobody is making light of the fact that she had mental issues. Or suicidal thoughts. How much of the question and criticism is the fact that it’s highly unbelievable that she looked for help and was refused. Simply based on the fact that her he himself was open that he had therapy And that mental health was one of their main platforms for many Royals
There are several posts on this thread explicitly saying “I think she’s lying about her suicidal thoughts.” You can judge her other claims to your heart’s desire, but it’s nobody’s place to judge or question a story like that. You can loathe her but we all should respect the weight of sharing a story like that and she deserves to be believed, because for the many others who have those sorts of feelings who are thinking about coming forward, they see commentary and like that and think “nobody will believe me” or “maybe it’s just all in my head,” and the consequences can be deadly. Each struggle with mental health is different, and who am I to accuse her of lying about feelings that only she truly would know. Suicide still remains heavily stigmatized, and posts like that just perpetuate the stigma.
It’s a good question. I also wondered why a strong, intelligent, mature, independent woman such as Meghan couldn’t have just gotten help for herself when she started realizing she was going down a bad path?
First of all, it’s not on her to get herself help. This is the oldest mental health stigma in the book. When somebody’s in a burning building, do we say it’s totally on them to get themselves out? No we call people with the resources to get them out for help. It doesn’t matter how strong, intelligent, mature, whatever you are, those thoughts can be debilitating. This way of thinking is why so many people who are around people who have these thoughts turn a blind eye. “They’re smart; I’m sure they’ll work it out.” That can have deadly consequences.
But let’s assume she or her husband did actively try to get help, as they claim. I truly think that this was one of the largest points of the interview you missed: once you become part of the Royal Family, you cede all your agency and personal control. I think we all say we understand that, but until one actually does it, one doesn’t understand what a complete transformation of lifestyle it is, especially for an American. She talked about not having possession of her own passport and driver’s license, needing permission to go mostly anywhere, and being hounded by the press. She at one point said “It’s not like I could just call an Uber.” It doesn’t seem like either of them could do a whole lot on their own, and frankly, if she told “the Firm” she was having these thoughts, then that in and of itself was a huge way of getting herself help. If she says they didn’t respond adequately from her perspective, who am I to judge that story? It’s her story about her own mental health problems. Again, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that any family/institution that cares about public perception would discourage one of its members from seeking that kind of help (which would be impossible to hide), because it happens all the time, just in much smaller settings.
You can despise everything else she said but a little empathy and compassion on the mental health front would go along way, not just for her but for every person who watched that interview and genuinely thought “I feel that” or “I’ve been there.” Sometimes people let their personal feelings over celebrities eclipse actually important things like that.
