Doctors feared Diana had ‘mental disease’
ROYAL doctors feared Princess Diana was afflicted with a mental health disease that could be genetically passed to her children, according to explosive revelations yesterday.
An “army” of royal household doctors dosed the princess with drugs and were “plainly scared” by her symptoms, it was claimed.
The revelations came from a letter written in 1983 by psychotherapist Dr Alan McGlashan, who treated Diana after she had “distanced herself” from the Queen’s medics.
Dr McGlashan writes that Sir John Batten and his medical team, who treated Diana in the first years of her marriage, were “overawed by the possibilities of dynastic disaster”.
Describing Diana, he wrote: “She is a normal girl whose troubles were emotional, not pathological.” Diana, who in later years opened up about her mental health turmoil and eating disorder, met with Dr McGlashan eight times.
His assessment of the “courageous” young Princess came in a private letter to Charles’s friend and confidant Laurens Van der Post. He wrote: “[Charles] telephoned me on January 24 and asked me to see D [Diana] the following day, which I did.
“She is a very unhappy girl, facing situations on various fronts which she finds difficult to deal with, though making a courageous effort to do so.
“She has been surrounded by an army of doctors... and has been dosed with anti-depressants and sleeping drugs, and behaviourist techniques.”
He added: “I came to the conclusion that she is a normal girl whose troubles were emotional, not pathological.
“Her doctors had been treating her as a patient with an obscure and dangerous illness which baffled them... Her symptoms plainly scared them... She complained to me that they all treated her ‘as if I were made of porcelain’.
Difficult
“It was a difficult and delicate situation for me, coming into such an overloaded medical scene, but this was greatly simplified by D herself, who has gently but firmly distanced herself from them all, having made what I think is a very good contact with me.” The letter came to light during research for a biography of Mr Van der Post.
Dr McGlashan was a First World War veteran pilot and practised as a doctor until his death at the age of 98.
Diana was famously open about her mental heath issues and admitted she suffered from the “secret disease” bulimia for several years.
She claimed the condition was “a symptom” of her tumultuous marriage to Charles and that she was “crying out” for help.
Diana was said to have suffered recurring nightmares about sea monsters in the months after William was born in 1982.
Her sons William and Harry have raised awareness of mental health conditions, drawing on their own experience of losing their mother.