Don’t be afraid to say the word ‘suicide’, Prince urges
THE Prince of Wales has urged people not to be shy about saying the word “suicide” out loud in the conversation about mental health.
Roman Kemp, the Capital FM presenter and champion of the Princess of Wales’s Shaping Us early years campaign, said he discussed the issue with the Prince last week.
He said: “I saw the Prince of Wales at the launch [of Shaping Us] the other day and he said to me: ‘It’s just so great and so important that you say the word suicide out loud’.
“I was shocked that he said that but he’s so right, and that’s what I’ve been trying to push, so to hear that from him was really great.” The Prince has been a long-time campaigner for men’s mental health and suicide prevention, and has spoken about how his time as an air ambulance pilot made him grasp the scale of the issue.
Mental health has been at the forefront of the Wales’s working lives for several years and in 2016 they launched the Heads Together campaign with the Duke of Sussex to tackle the stigma surrounding the conversation. Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Kemp said that it makes him “very proud of the Royal family” to be able to have those discussions about the importance of mental health with them.
He was announced earlier this week as one of the celebrity “champions” of the Princess’s new campaign to raise awareness about the importance of the first five years of a child’s life.
Kemp has been a mental health advocate since the suicide of Joe Lyons, his best friend, in 2020.
The 30-year-old radio host said: “I want to champion this cause to my audience of people that have been following the work that I’ve been doing.”
He added that owing to his platform and previous campaigning, “there’s a lot of younger lads that I’m able to reach that maybe the Princess wasn’t, so hopefully it’s a cross-collaboration”.
Other champions include Leah Williamson, the England footballer, Professor Green, the Read All About It singer, television personalities Fearne Cotton and Zara McDermott, Ugo Monye, a former rugby player, and Giovanna Fletcher, an actress and podcaster.