After first opening up about her mental-health struggles in 2021, Meghan Markle is revisiting that dark time in her past in hopes of reaching others struggling with suicidal ideation. In a new interview on Sunday, the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry sat down with CBS to discuss the launch of the Parents’ Network — the couple’s new initiative intended to connect and offer support to families who have lost children “directly or indirectly” to social media. While sitting with the royals in Santa Barbara, host Jane Pauley probed Markle on the connection between her own monarchy-related trauma and the victims of online bullying they’d gathered to honor that day. “When you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma, I believe part of our healing journey — certainly part of mine — is being able to be really open about it,” Markle told Pauley.
“You know, I haven’t really scraped the surface on my experience, but I do think that I would never want someone else to feel that way. And I would never want someone else to be making those sorts of plans, and I would never want someone else not to be believed,” she added. “So, if me voicing what I have overcome will save someone, or encourage someone in their life to really genuinely check in on them and not assume that the appearance is good, so everything’s okay, then that’s worth it. I’ll take a hit for that.”
Three years ago, Markle opened up to Oprah Winfrey about her own experience with suicidal ideation for the first time, citing the difficulties she had assimilating into the royal family and the racist attacks she’d received from the British tabloids, all while pregnant with her son, Archie. “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” she said at the time. While the couple have since decamped from the U.K. to Montecito where they lead a much quieter life, the 43-year-old said that she still worries about the online environment her kids — 5-year-old Prince Archie and 3-year-old Princess Lilibet — will someday inherit. “All you want to do as parents is protect them,” she told Pauley. “So, as we can see what’s happening in the online space, we know that there’s a lot of work to be done there, and we’re just happy to be able to be a part of change for good.”
In the U.S., the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.
