Author, News Department
Place of work, BBC Russian Service
Published October 9, 2026, 00:00 GMT
Updated 3 minutes ago
Reading time: 4 min
The Duke of Sussex said he "fell into a depression for about two weeks" after moving to Canada in 2019, shortly before he and his family left the UK for the US.
Prince Harry, who recently returned to the UK with his wife Meghan and their two children, shared details about his mental health in a session with a neuroscientist on an educational video platform.
The Duke of Sussex also said that after the death of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, he felt "emotionally numb" because he felt "a sense of betrayal and guilt at the thought of being happy and joyful without her."
Prince Harry and his brother, the Prince of Wales, have previously spoken candidly about their mental health struggles, including those related to the death of their mother in 1997. Both brothers are also involved in mental health charities.
Prince Harry, who stepped back from royal duties to move to California with Meghan, made the remarks as part of a paid online masterclass on coping with grief.
“Being in Canada, away from a stressful environment where, presumably, my body was just flooded with adrenaline, after two or three days I experienced a sharp drop in adrenaline levels - something that I had never experienced before,” Harry recalled of his stay in Vancouver, where he and Meghan spent six weeks in late 2019 before moving to the United States in 2020.
“It was like I needed stress to get the adrenaline flowing so my brain could function properly because I had become completely useless at home. “I actually became depressed for about two weeks and felt like I couldn’t function properly without adrenaline,” Harry said.
Last month, Harry and Meghan unexpectedly announced they were returning to the UK with their children Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, after six years in the US.
At the entrance to the online session, Prince Harry also said that he had set a rule for himself to never be away from home for more than ten days in a row.
He talked about how he tried to cope with his grief in the years after his mother died when he was 12 years old.
“I went to war twice in my 20s, thinking I could escape my feelings,” the duke said, referring to his service in Afghanistan with the British Army. “But that didn’t happen.” I remained emotionally numb for a very long time, largely because I felt a sense of betrayal and guilt at the thought of being happy and joyful without her.”
“I felt like I had to be sad and emotionally numb to prove to her that I missed her,” Prince Harry recalled.
During the online session, Harry also said that after crying at Diana's funeral, he didn't cry at all for almost two decades.
He said a therapist advised him to spray Diana's perfume to "unblock everything", adding that it made him realize: "She just wanted me to be happy."
Mary-Frances O'Connor, a neuroscientist and professor at the University of Arizona who also participated in the online session, explained: "Your brain doesn't perceive a loved one as having died—it perceives them as someone you have lost. And it will continue to look for it until you teach your brain to perceive the situation differently. We're still waiting for them to come through the door."
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