A New Champion for Mental Health
It strikes me that until an issue has a champion it often is ignored or paid lip service by governments and the public, wringing their hands saying “something must be done”. However, it often takes celebrity to make an issue bankable enough to be something that catches the public and media’s imagination.
Cast your minds back to the early days of AIDS and HIV, it took people like Princess Diana to normalise the public’s response to sufferers and to make these people human again.
As JFK would have said, “the tourch has been passed to a new generation”, enter the Duke of Cambridge, HRH Prince William. In my opinion, in a move just as, if not in some ways more important that his mother normalising AIDS, he has spoke of the importance of normalising mental health.
His calls to fathers to talk to their children about mental health issues in the same way they would talk about other health issues, is a huge step forward in getting the national dialogue to begin. As I have written on several occasions there can be no good health without good mental health. Thank you Your Royal Highness, for saying what needed to be said. This is a family that is not afraid of tackling head on the social issues of the day, and I think we should be grateful to have them.
