Prince William at Davos: Brits suppress emotions at risk of their mental health
When the billionaire pooh-bahs of the world gathered at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, this week, it was a young royal pooh-bah – Prince William the Duke of Cambridge – who impressed with his grasp of such weighty topics as climate change and mental health.
On the latter topic, it might be time for the British to loosen their famously stiff upper lips to help improve their mental health, the future king suggested.
In part, the Davos spotlight was on William, 36, because some of the usual stars were missing: British Prime Minister Theresa May stayed home, trying to clean up the Brexit mess. President Donald Trump also was a no-show, stuck at home in the government shutdown mess.
The second in line to the throne spent two days at Davos, which included a private meeting on the sidelines with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.Â
His appearance at the annual confab marked another step for the prince in taking on more responsibilities as a representative of Queen Elizabeth II and the British government abroad. Last year, he visited Israel and the West Bank, in the first official royal visit since 1948.Â
On Tuesday, William played journalist by interviewing British natural-history filmmaker Sir David Attenborough about climate change onstage in the forum’s Congress Hall, as breathtaking scenes from nature scrolled on a giant screen behind them.
On Wednesday, William joined a high-caliber panel – including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – to discuss the global problem of improving mental-health services, especially removing the stigma associated with mental disorders.Â
Step 1, he told the audience: Talk about it openly, as he, his wife, Duchess Kate, his brother, Prince Harry, and now Harry’s new wife, Duchess Meghan, have been doing for several years with their Heads Together campaign.
Step 2 might be doing away with stiff-upper-lip attitudes. “We’re all embarrassed by our emotions, British people particularly,” he said with a chuckle.
He said it has a lot to do with the WWII generation of his grandparents, the queen, 92, and her husband, Prince Philip, 97, who learned to deal with the horrors of the war years by bottling everything up and just getting on with it, passing on that attitude to the next generations.Â
“So this whole generation inherited that this is how we deal with problems – we don’t talk about them,” William said. “I think that now there’s a generation that’s realizing this is not normal and we should talk about them. We should get over it.”
William also talked about something he’s talked about before: How he dealt with trauma as an air ambulance helicopter pilot for several years before taking up full-time royal duties. He said he still finds it difficult to talk about.
“I was dealing with a lot of trauma on a day in, day out basis, stuff that your body is not programmed to deal with,” he said. But talking about it openly with his ambulance team after-action helped everyone process the stress.
“I know that if I hadn’t taken the action that I did, then I would have gone down a slippery slope and I would have been dealing with mental illness on a different level,” he said.Â
After years of working with charities dealing with homelessness, addiction and veterans welfare, the young royals realized that one thing is at the heart of all these problems: mental health. Yet no one wanted to talk about it.
“We realized it was something we could take on, to warn everyone that this really matters,” he said. But at first, he said, not one celebrity wanted to join their campaign.Â
“No one responded when we reached out three years ago, but once the ball got rolling, people realized that we put our necks on the line,” he said. “Then some very brave people came forward and took on the task of speaking out about mental health.
“Now it’s a lot easier to talk about, which was the whole point of the campaign.”
On Tuesday, the prince quizzed Attenborough about why it’s taken so long to address climate change and how attitudes about the interdependent relationship between humanity and nature have changed since the 92-year-old acclaimed naturalist started making films in the 1950s. Â
Attenborough, whose new documentary series “Our Planet” is to be released by Netflix this spring, got a standing ovation after he warned that the planet faces destruction if climate change is not dealt with soon, The Associated Press reported.Â
More: What’s Prince William doing on Duchess Kate’s 37th birthday?
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“We are seeing that almost everything we do has its echoes and has its implications across the natural world,” Attenborough said. “The mechanisms that we have for destruction are so wholesale and so frightening that we have actually exterminated whole ecosystems without even noticing.”
But he was still optimistic the world will act in time, despite naysayers such as Trump, who either don’t believe the climate is changing or don’t believe that human activities are causing it.
“We can reduce the extremes of weather that’s overtaking the planet already,” Attenborough said. “And that is essential for the future well-being of the planet. … We have the power, we have the knowledge to actually live in harmony with nature.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
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