This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide please call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, made the somber revelation in her interview with Oprah Winfrey Sunday night that she has had suicidal thoughts.
While reflecting on the onslaught of negative press the duchess received since marrying Prince Harry in 2018, the duchess said that it came to a point where the situation felt unsurvivable.
“I just didn’t see a solution,” she told Winfrey. “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought.”
She was hesitant to tell Prince Harry, knowing how much he had already suffered with the loss of his mother, Princess Diana, when he was 12 years old. “But I knew if I didn’t say it,” she said, “I would do it.”
The former Meghan Markle did eventually tell her husband that she was having suicidal thoughts, saying that what she remembers from the conversation was “how he just cradled me.” The two had to go to an event at the Royal Albert Hall hours later, an outing Harry didn’t think Meghan should attend given her mental state.
“I remember him saying, ‘I don't think you can go,’ and I said, ‘I can't be left alone.’
The next day, Meghan went to “the institution,” which she describes as the people running the business of the royal family, and said she needed to get help. The response, she said, was no.
“They said, ‘My heart goes out to you because I see how bad it is, but there's nothing we can do to protect you because you're not a paid employee of the institution,” she told Winfrey. “We had to find a solution.”
Related
Harry later joined his wife and Winfrey, saying that when Meghan came to him with this confession, he couldn't turn to his family for help.
"For the family, they very much have this mentality of, 'This is just how it is. This is how it's meant to be, you can't change it. We've all been through it,'" he said. Harry added how silent his family was when it came to the racist press coverage surrounding Meghan, who is half Black.
"There was an opportunity, many opportunities for my family, to show some public support," he said. "Yet no one from my family ever said anything."
Meghan and Harry stepped back as members of the royal family in 2020, a bombshell announcement that resulted in the two, with their son, Archie, leaving England and settling down in the duchess’ home state of California. Harry told James Corden in an interview that aired in February that the reason for the decision was because of the toxicity of the British press. “I did what any husband and what any father would do,” he said.
We all know what the British press can be like, and it was destroying my mental health. I was like, this is toxic. So, I did what any husband and what any father would do," he told James Corden. “I was like, 'I need to get my family out of here.”