The Duke of Cambridge has opened up about losing his mother Princess Diana at such a young age, describing the feeling as a "pain like no other pain". William was interviewed for BBC One's A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health alongside five footballing icons, to highlight the importance of talking about men's mental health. In a group discussion with Thierry Henry, Peter Crouch, Danny Rose, Jermaine Jenas and Gareth Southgate, presenter Dan Walker asked the future King about the importance of speaking about bereavement.
"I've thought about this a lot, and I'm trying to understand why I feel like I do," said William. "But I think when you are bereaved at a very young age, any time really, but particularly at a young age, I can resonate closely to that, you feel pain like no other pain. And you know that in your life it's going to be very difficult to come across something that's going to be even worse pain than that. But it also brings you so close to all those other people out there who have been bereaved.
© Photo: BBCWilliam said: "You feel pain like no other pain"
"So you instantly, when you talk to someone else, you can almost see it in their eyes sometimes, and it's a weird thing to say but when someone's desperate to talk about bereavement, you can kind of pick up on it quite quick. They want to talk about it, but they want you to go first, they want you say it's ok, they want to have your permission that in that particular conversation, one-on-one, it's ok to talk about bereavement."
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William also noted that in Britain people are "a bit embarrassed sometimes" about talking about their feelings. "The British stiff upper lip thing, that's great and we need to have that occasionally when times are really hard," he said. "There has to be a moment for that. But otherwise we've got to relax a little bit and be able to talk about our emotions because we're not robots."
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Footballers Thierry Henry, Peter Crouch, Danny Rose, Jermaine Jenas and Gareth Southgate joined in the conversation to talk about their own mental health and worries, from issues with body image and depression to the impact of career-ending injury. With suicide still the biggest killer of men under the age of 45, the film sets out to tackle the importance of talking about men's mental health.
A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health airs on BBC One on Sunday at 10.30pm.
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