Will royal patronage improve perceptions of mental illness?

摘要

With news of an initiative for people with mental health problems launched by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, it is timely to review perceptions of mental health in society. The quest by the royals is to de-stigmatise mental illness and to bring it into line with physical health problems and therefore public acceptability (Booth, 2017). The Duke and his brother Harry have endeavoured to raise the public profile of mental health for some time and have themselves publicly discussed the impact of their mother Princess Diana's death in August 1997 on their own mental health. Many will recall seeing the two young royals as they walked stoically alongside their mother s funeral cortege from St James's Palace to Westminster Abbey, and some will have pondered on the effect it might have on them. Prince Harry has now revealed that he accessed counselling support in his late 20s to help him deal with the residual aftermath of his mother's premature death when he was only 12 years of age, and admitted that he had come close to a complete mental health breakdown (Kennedy, 2017).