GOOD Morning Britain’s Dr Hilary Jones suggested Prince Harry may have had too much therapy on the ITV breakfast show today.
His comments came after Prince Harry, 36, opened up about his mental health on a podcast last week with presenter Dax Shephard, and again with Oprah Winfrey on his new documentary The Me You Can’t See.
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Dr Hilary, 67, spoke to show hosts Susanna Reid and Adil Ray about the fallout from Harry’s bombshell interviews, with journalist Andrew Pierce insisting his criticism of Prince Charles’ parenting should have been kept private.
Andrew said: “It’s essentially a session with a psychiatrist, and it’s playing out on TV which means all his family get sucked into it, and it’s meant to be private.”
Interrupting him, Dr Hilary remarked on an NHS psychiatrist having recently claimed that Prince Harry was showing signs of having too much therapy.
Referencing NHS psychiatrist Dr Max Pemberton saying Harry is over-analysing his troubles, Dr Hilary said: “Actually, it rang bells with me.
“Because if you become totally focused on your own victimhood you never escape from it, and I think there is a risk of that perhaps being played out here.”
And Susanna replied: “It would be a terrible irony if in destigmatising therapy he actually puts people off therapy. Because it’s really important that people do get the support that they need.”
Adil Ray, who clashed with Susanna earlier on the topic, begged viewers to make up their own minds and listen to the podcast.
He said: “I urge people to go and listen to the podcast as I think you will come away thinking he destigmatises it and it shows mental health is something we all have.”
Speaking on the Armchair Expert Podcast last week, Harry, 36, told host Dax Shephard his dad, 72, “suffered” due to his upbringing by the Queen and Philip, then “treated me the way he was treated”.
He said: “I verbalise it, which is, ‘Isn’t life about breaking the cycle?’
“There’s no blame, I don’t think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody.
“But certainly when it comes to parenting, if I have experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering perhaps my father or my parents suffered, I’m gonna make sure that I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on, basically.”
He added: “There is a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway. As parents we should be doing the most that we can to say, ‘You know what, that happened to me, I’m gonna make sure that’s not going to happen to you’.”
But Dr Pemberton suggested it would be helpful for the duke to show through his actions how he has turned his difficulties into something positive, “rather than simply sounding spoilt and angry”.
While “bottling things up is not the answer,” the doctor says the prince should, at some point, “let it go”.
“Constantly reopening and examining [wounds] only makes them take longer to heal and more likely to scar,” he says.
“Sometimes, the best thing someone can do is to pick themself up, dust themself off, accept that they have been knocked down and get on with their life.”
