Louise O'Neill: Good mental health should be not be limited to those who can afford to pay for it

To have someone with Prince Harry's platform be so open about his experiences — the PTSD, the panic attacks, the attempts to numb his pain with alcohol and drugs — and the steps he took to heal from that, might go some way towards destigmatising these issues

Louise O'Neill, author. Photograph Moya Nolan

On the morning of August 31, 1997, my father came in to my room, gently shook me awake, and told me Princess Diana had died. I burst into tears and didn’t stop for about a week. I find this reaction bizarre, looking back, and am at a loss to explain it. 

I hadn’t been raised in a pro-Monarchy household; they were considered more of an oddity than anything else. But we watched the funeral together, crying again at Elton John’s hastily re-worked version of Candle in the Wind, the envelope with ‘Mummy’ scrawled across it in childish handwriting. I was just a little younger than Prince Harry, and he was the one I watched as he was hugged by weeping strangers, flushing a little but so stoic, preternaturally calm.