GaGa and the Prince
Mental health crusade
PRINCE William has had a FaceTime chat with outrageous pop queen Lady Gaga in a bid to help people open up about mental health issues.
® PRINCE William had an online chat with Lady Gaga yesterday about mental health.
The royal praised the pop queen for speaking out about her own struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.
William said: “I thought it was incredibly moving and very brave of you to write down such personal feelings.”
But during the chat, uploaded on the star’s Twitter account and the Royal Family’s Facebook page, Lady Gaga said speaking up was not easy.
She added: “It made me very nervous at first. For me, waking up every day and feeling sad and going on stage is something that is very hard to describe.
“There’s a lot of shame attached to mental illness, you feel like something is wrong with you.
“And I should be so happy but you can’t help it if in the morning when you wake up, you are so tired, you are so sad, you are so full of anxiety and the shakes.”
Battles
Yesterday Prince William called on more “influential and very important” people to open up about their “issues and their battles”.
“I really think this is a pivotal moment in the change of mental health,” he said.
“As you can see, I have my own reasons for being involved in mental health – what happened to me with my mother when I was younger – but equally the charitable work I do at the moment and the areas that I’m involved in, it all comes back to mental health.”
He said: “For me, the tipping point came when I saw the impact of suicide through my work as a helicopter pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance. ”
The prince was speaking after his appearance in the first of a two-part BBC documentary Mind Over Marathon, which follows 10 runners with mental health issues as they prepare to tackle the classic distance. Well done Harry: Forum, Page 21