King Charles apologised to Prince Harry over his PTSD diagnosis according to his memoir Spare
As Prince Harry’s life seemingly spiralled out of control in the wake of his mother’s death and his return from war, his father weighed in with a stunning admission.
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King Charles blames the Duke of Sussex’s protracted battles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on his late offer of getting him professional help and has apologised, saying, “I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault.”
In his bombshell memoir, Spare, Prince Harry admits he has long suffered with the mental health condition triggered by traumatic events after his mother’s death and his return from military service in Afghanistan.
Recalling a conversation he held in early 2010, he writes that he told his father he had been plagued with panic and anxiety attacks and that Charles “lowered his head and said, ‘I suppose it’s my fault. I should have gotten you the help you needed years ago.’”
The renegade royal, who left the royal family with his wife, Meghan Markle, in 2020, continues, “It wasn’t his fault.”
“But I appreciated the apology,” he added.
Harry’s mental health decline began in earnest in 2013 when he returned home from Afghanistan where he admits in his autobiography that he killed 25 insurgents by “not thinking of them as people but as chess pieces that had fallen off the board.”
After undergoing counselling he believes his mental health battles were first triggered by the shock death of his mother Diana in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris in 1997 when Harry was 12.
Following his confession, Charles sent Harry to a doctor, “which was a very kind gesture on his part,” but he wasn’t much help, the prince, now 38, writes.
“He wanted to prescribe me pills. I did not want to take pills,” he says.
The ex-royal “exhausted all other remedies, including homoeopathic ones” and eventually turned to magnesium.
He even experimented with magic mushroom and cocaine to “feel better” but “it wasn’t much fun,” he says.
Harry describes his symptoms in the book as “alternating between periods of extremely debilitating lethargy and terrifying panic attacks.”
“My official life consisted of going out in public, engaging in discussions, debates and giving interviews, and suddenly I found myself almost incapable of doing these basic functions,” he explains.
Harry offers more detail about how he would sweat profusely moments before public appearances, which he tried to self-diagnose by researching online what was wrong with him.
“The answer was right in front of my nose,” he wrote. He was suffering from post-traumatic syndrome.
“It never occurred to me that I could also be suffering from PTSD. Aside from all of my work with injured soldiers, all of my efforts to help them … I never realised that I myself was an injured soldier.
“And my war had not started in Afghanistan. It started in August of 1997.”
Elsewhere in the memoir, Harry admits he still ruminates on his mother’s death and resents that his father never hugged him when he delivered the “news like a politician” that his mother had died.
“Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances, how could he be expected to show them in such a crisis?” he wrote.
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