Wills: I hid strain of being a rescue pilot from Kate
Prince led dual life to shield family
PRINCE William has revealed how he led a dual life while working for the air ambulance service and hid the mental strain of his job from his family.
He spoke frankly about how certain incidents, in particular those involving children, ‘really affected’ him while he was a pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance.
He also told how he tried to keep his anguish from his wife, Kate.
William’s comments were made in a filmed discussion with ambulance staff screened at the Royal Foundation’s emergency services mental health symposium in London yesterday.
He told ambulance service husband and wife team Chloe Taylor, 24, and Will Parish, 27: ‘In the air ambulance, any job I went to with children, that really affected me...
‘There were a number of times when I had to take myself away because I was just getting too involved in it and feeling it.’ He later emphasised this in a speech at the symposium, saying: ‘Supporting the mental health of our emergency services is very personal to me.
‘I often think about my time working for RAF Search and Rescue and the East Anglian Air Ambulance. I remember the pressure of attending calls in the most stressful conditions, sometimes with tragic conclusions. I remember the sense of solidarity with my team, pulling together to do the best we could and sharing the weight of responsibility.
‘I also remember returning home with the stresses and strains of the day weighing on my mind, and wanting to avoid burdening my family with what I had seen.’
William served with RAF Search and Rescue from 2009 before joining the East Anglian Ambulance service in July 2015 for two years.
He described the ‘complexities of talking to family and friends about the job’ and ‘having a split personality – one for home and one for work’. But he urged emergency workers not to feel shame or embarrassment about those feelings, saying that if they didn’t ‘we’d all be robots’.
Yesterday’s event saw William launch a package of mental health support for emergency workers. Services across the UK have for the first time signed up to a uniform set of standards.
The symposium was hosted in partnership with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, National Fire Chiefs’ Council, Association of Ambulance Chief Executives United Kingdom Search and Rescue, and brought together emergency service leaders, frontline workers, policy makers and academics.
The future king admitted that he ‘misses the uniform’ and paid tribute to all who work in the field, saying: ‘The past two years have been a sharp reminder of the debt of gratitude we owe staff and volunteers from our police, fire, ambulance, and search and rescue services.
‘Working as an emergency responder places significant strain on an individual’s mental health even in normal times. In a pandemic, for many it has been almost unmanageable.
‘They have been placed under inordinate amounts of pressure – not just professionally, but also personally. The work you do is some of the toughest out there.
‘I would only ask that you look out for your own wellbeing, just as you tirelessly care for everyone else’s.’
Among those present was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick. She hailed William’s ‘passion’ and ‘sheer hard work’ on mental health support for frontline workers.
‘Inordinate amounts of pressure’