Prince Harry is opening up about his experience after returning home from combat in Afghanistan. In a new Netflix series, he spoke about facing post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from a tour in 2012.
He likened the suppression of his emotions to what he dealt with when his mother, Princess Diana, died when he was 12 years old. He also shared that the impact of his mother's death was never talked about, similar to how he found himself unable to find anyone to support him after his return home.
The new series launched on Netflix on Wednesday. Harry mentioned that upon his return home, he had reached out to other veterans about the Invictus Games for injured soldiers.
“The biggest struggle for me was no one around me really could help; I didn’t have that support structure, that network or that expert advice to identify what was actually going on with me,” he said. “Unfortunately, like most of us, the first time you consider therapy is when you are lying on the floor in the fetal position probably wishing you had dealt with some of this stuff previously."
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In 2014, Harry founded the Invictus Games as a Paralympic-style event that was designed to inspire military veterans around the world who were working to overcome injuries sustained on the battlefield. Heart of Invictus, the series, features a group of injured soldiers as they prepared for last year’s Invictus Games in The Netherlands.
Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, signed a contract to produce content for Netflix only after they resigned from their royal duties in 2020. The couple then moved to Southern California.
Their decision to split from the royal family was both commended and condemned by people. In 2022, a six-part series premiered that detailed the cutting of their ties to the royal family.
Harry attended a screening in California for the new Netflix series on August 29. He spoke to the audience about the sacrifices veterans and their families often make when they choose to serve their country.
"I can only speak from my personal experience — my tour of Afghanistan in 2011 flying Apaches," he said. “Somewhere after that there was an unravelling and the trigger to me was returning from Afghanistan.”
"But the stuff that was coming up was from 1997 – from the age of 12," Harry continued. "Losing my mum at such a young age, the trauma that I had, I was never really aware of … when it all came fizzing out I was bouncing off the walls."
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