CBS
- Meghan Markle revealed that she had suicidal thoughts after joining the royal family in 2018.
- She told Oprah Winfrey that she was turned away when she sought mental health help.
- Royal experts cast doubt on Markle being turned away, as past royals have gone to therapy.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
In a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle revealed that she “didn’t want to be alive anymore” after the abuse she suffered from the British tabloids and a perceived lack of support from the royal family.
“I was ashamed to say it at the time and ashamed to have to admit it to Harry. But I knew that if I didn’t say it – then I would do it,” the Duchess of Sussex told Winfrey in the interview, which aired Sunday night.
Markle said she spoke with a senior member of the royal institution about seeking help for her mental health and was turned away.
“I said that, ‘I’ve never felt this way before, and I need to go somewhere,”’ Markle recalled to Winfrey. “And I was told that I couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be good for the institution.”
The Duchess of Sussex also tried to get help via the institution’s human resources department. Although she received some sympathy, representatives of the institution told Markle there was nothing they could do for her.
"I remember this conversation like it was yesterday, because 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,'" Markle said in the interview.
Some royal biographers have cast doubt on Markle's allegations, saying other royals received mental health care in times of need. But throughout the bombshell interview, Markle and Prince Harry maintained that she was not offered the support and protections that were standard for other members of the family.
Some members of the royal family have gotten mental health treatment in the past
Princess Diana opened up about her experience with postpartum depression in an interview with BBC in 1995. She told the network she "received a great deal of treatment," and she briefly touched on the royal family's response.
"Well maybe I was the first person ever to be in this family who ever had a depression or was ever openly tearful," Diana said. "And obviously that was daunting, because if you've never seen it before, how do you support it?"
Prince Harry also sought counseling to work through unresolved emotions surrounding his mother's death. In an interview with The Telegraph in 2017, he said his brother, Prince William, was the one who urged him to speak with a professional when he was "very close to a complete breakdown."
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have made mental health a public priority since 2016, when they launched the "Heads Together" campaign to end the stigma surrounding mental health.
Prince Harry was also a part of the "Heads Together" effort, and Markle joined the team when they launched Shout, a 24/7 mental health textline service, in 2019.
Royal commentators have expressed doubt that Markle would've been refused help
Experts have pointed to past instances of royal family members getting mental health treatment and questioned whether the Duchess of Sussex really would've been turned away.
"It is distressing to hear her say she was suicidal and traumatic that she asked for help," Angela Levin, journalist and royal biographer, told the Daily Mail. "Prince Harry sought help after his mother died. I can hardly believe that Harry did not help. That is a catastrophic thing to say."
However, Markle said in the interview that the royal institution, not Harry, refused her help.
Jonathan Dimbleby, historian and author of Prince Charles' biography, said on Radio 4's World At One that he doubted that "anyone nowadays" would turn away someone in distress out of concerns about appearances.
"I would be very surprised … that a senior figure in the household said 'it would not look good' if Meghan were to seek help for her obvious distress and her statement that she was feeling suicidal," Dimbleby said. "I find that to be beyond belief, to be quite honest."
We don't know much about treating suicidality
For such a prevalent issue, suicidality remains a somewhat taboo and mysterious topic.
Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. Globally, 800,000 people die from suicide every year - that's twice the number from homicide. And cases of suicidal ideation that don't result in action are hardly tracked.
"People think we understand more about suicide than we actually do," April Foreman, licensed psychologist and executive board member at the American Association of Suicidology, told the journalist Anna Borges for the Outline. "We have invested very, very little into research on suicide, especially on feeling chronically suicidal."