Prince Harry says he fell into depression for two weeks after moving to Canada in 2019

The depression admission

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, told neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor during the MasterClass course "Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss" that he fell into depression for about two weeks after leaving Britain. He placed the low in Canada, where he and Meghan spent six weeks in Vancouver at the end of 2019 before moving to the United States in 2020. He said that within two or three days of arriving in Canada, away from a stressful environment in which his body was presumably full of adrenaline, he experienced a sharp drop in adrenaline, something he had never felt before.

Harry said that at home he had become "useless" and that his brain seemed to need stress to produce the adrenaline it required to function. He said he could not function without adrenaline during those weeks.

Diana's death and years of numbness

Harry said he was 12 when his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in 1997. He said he did not cry when he was told of her death, only at her funeral, and did not cry again for nearly two decades. He described feeling emotionally numb and guilty about the possibility of being happy without her. He said he had forgotten the sound of her voice and her laugh, and could not picture her face without a photograph. Years later a therapist suggested he seek out Diana's perfume to bring those memories back. He said he and his brother, the Prince of Wales, have spoken openly about mental health issues, including those linked to their mother's death.

Looking back, Harry said he had mistaken that silence for toughness.

I was convinced that was strength, but it wasn't.

Army service and panic attacks

Harry said he went to war twice in his twenties, believing he could run from his own feelings, a reference to his service in Afghanistan with the British Army. He said that after his second Afghanistan deployment in 2013, old trauma resurfaced and triggered panic attacks. He described feeling "absolute panic" at royal engagements, and said that simply putting on a shirt, jacket and tie could make him feel suddenly suffocated. He described the army as "the perfect distraction" from feelings he had carried for years, and said that for 15 or 20 years his answer to whether he was fine had always been that he was.

The MasterClass and family life

The session is part of a paid online course on coping with grief, with a subscription costing 120 to 228 pounds a year, according to Observador. The episode was released on Thursday, 8 October, and was recorded in California earlier this summer, according to People as cited by El País. Harry said he has a rule never to be away from his family for more than ten days in a row. The couple announced their return to Britain last month, unexpectedly, after six years in the United States, bringing their children Archie and Lilibet with them. El País reported that since returning he has focused on the Invictus Games and other work, and that he is in negotiations to produce a documentary tied to the 30th anniversary of Diana's death in Paris.