Recently, Prince Harry has bravely been hitting the airwaves and opening up about mental health in a very personal and meaningful way. After stepping away from royal duties in 2020, Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have revealed intimate stories about their own psychological struggles. In the AppleTV+ television series “The Me You Can’t See” that he co-produced with Oprah Winfrey and in sit-down interviews with the media mogul and others, Harry has spoken from the heart about issues he’s faced.
In addition, he has shared the fact that he’s been going to
therapy, and he’s discussed some powerful therapeutic techniques that he uses in his own life. Opening up about personal struggles in such a public way takes tremendous courage, and his efforts to bring mental health issues out of the shadows of our minds should be applauded.
In this new conversation about mental well-being, Amen Clinics would add one more element—the brain. Our brain imaging work—over 170,000 brain scans related to behavior—reveals that “mental health” is really “brain health.”
SPECT, the brain imaging technology used at Amen Clinics, measures blood flow and activity in the brain and reveals 3 things: areas of the brain with healthy activity, too little activity, and too much activity. Abnormal activity in the brain is often associated with symptoms of mental health issues. The human brain is an organ just like your heart and all your other organs, and you can only be as mentally healthy as your brain is functionally healthy.
In light of the brain’s role in psychological, cognitive, and behavioral well-being, here are 5 takeaways from Harry’s recent revelations about mental health and how the brain is fundamentally involved in each of them.
5 Takeaways From Prince Harry’s Recent Revelations About Mental Health
1. Destigmatizing mental health
Harry has been championing the importance of talking about mental well-being for years since he and his brother, William, The Duke of Cambridge, and his sister-in-law Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, launched Heads Together. This initiative encourages people to stop feeling ashamed and start speaking up and asking for help when they are having issues related to emotional well-being. “Sharing your story in order to be able to save a life or help others is absolutely critical,” says Harry in the documentary series.
What’s happening in the brain: By labeling anxiousness, depression, and other issues as mental illness or psychiatric illness instead of brain health issues, people suffer in silence because of the shame they feel. No one is shamed for heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. No one should be shamed for anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Brain SPECT imaging helps destigmatize mental health issues. When people see a scan of their brain, it helps them view their problems as medical, not moral. This makes them more likely to talk openly about their struggles.
2. Addressing past trauma, grief, and loss
Harry shares that he was devastated by the death of his mother Princess Diana in 1997 in a car crash in Paris. Only 12 years old at the time, Harry recalls feeling “so angry with what happened to her.” But following his mother’s tragic demise, he wasn’t able to work through those feelings or discuss his grief with many people. He admits that in his 20s, he began drinking heavily and doing drugs as a Band-Aid to cover up the emotions that threatened to bubble up. “I would find myself drinking not because I was enjoying it but because I was trying to mask something,” he says, adding, “I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling.”
What’s happening in the brain: When we bottle up our grief, our emotional brain becomes inflamed. In order to heal from trauma, grief, and loss, people need to work through the pain rather than numbing it with alcohol or drugs.
3. EMDR therapy
In the third episode of the series, Harry reveals that he’s benefited from a psychotherapeutic therapy called
EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). This technique can be a potent treatment for people who have experienced emotional trauma as well as those who have developed PTSD. During the episode, Harry allows viewers to watch him as he undergoes the treatment, which involves eye movements (or other alternate hemisphere stimulation) to dampen the emotional charges associated with distressing thoughts and upsetting memories about the trauma. Harry says, “For me, London is a trigger, unfortunately, because of what happened to my mom and because of what I experienced and what I saw.”
What’s happening in the brain: Research suggests that EMDR activates mechanisms in the brain that allow you to reprocess distressing memories and emotions in a healthier way. The human brain is naturally wired to overcome upsetting events. A number of brain regions—including the hippocampus (memory-making center), amygdala (fear center), and prefrontal cortex (behavior center)—communicate with each other to effectively process the memories associated with these events. For some people, trauma disrupts the healthy flow of communication between these brain regions and disturbing memories get stuck. EMDR restores the healthy neural communication process so you can get unstuck.
4. Havening to soothe anxiety
In one of the episodes, Harry demonstrates a self-soothing technique called havening that can be helpful when feeling nervous or experiencing a
panic attack. Developed by Ronald Ruden, M.D., havening is surprisingly simple. You can slowly rub your hands together as if washing them, slide your hands down from your shoulders to your elbows as if hugging yourself, or run your fingers from your forehead to your chin as if washing your face.
What’s happening in the brain: From a neuroscience perspective, havening is a form of bilateral hemisphere stimulation, meaning it activates both sides of the brain while you mentally bring up a stressful thought or past trauma. This touch technique generates delta waves in the brain, the brainwaves that usually occur during sleep and that help calm anxious feelings. At the same time, special nerve endings in the areas of the body being touched sends signals to the amygdala (the brain’s fear center) that indicate safety and security.
5. Recognizing ancestral trauma
In an interview with Dax Shepard on the actor’s Armchair Expert podcast, Harry revealed that he faced trauma that was passed down to him. The Duke of Sussex assured that he wasn’t placing blame on his parents, but he says, “If I’ve experienced some form of pain and suffering because of the pain or suffering that my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on.”
What’s happening in the brain: Sometimes your mental health issues are not your own, but rather they have been passed down to you through the generations from your ancestors. These irrational fears, anxieties, and worries are “ancestral dragons” that breathes fire on the emotional centers of the brain. Recognizing these dragons and learning to tame them can calm the brain’s emotional centers.
Going Beyond Mental Health to Brain Health
Kudos to Prince Harry for tackling these important issues! What a magnificent ambassador for emotional health and well-being.
Here’s to delving even deeper to show people how the brain is the ultimate key to mental health. Reframing the discussion from mental health to brain health changes everything. It decreases shame and guilt and increases forgiveness and compassion from their families. Reframing the discussion to brain health is also more accurate and elevates hope, increases the desire to get help, and increases compliance to make the necessary lifestyle changes. Once people understand that the brain controls everything they think, feel, say, and do, they want a better brain so they can have a better life. In multiple studies, including one in
BMC Psychology, improving the physical functioning of the brain improves the mind.
Get your brain right and your mind will follow.
Anxiety, depression, emotional trauma, and other mental health issues can’t wait. During these uncertain times, your mental well-being is more important than ever, and waiting until life gets back to “normal” is likely to make your symptoms worsen over time.
At Amen Clinics, we’re here for you. We offer in-clinic brain scanning and appointments, as well as mental telehealth, remote clinical evaluations, and video therapy for adults, children, and couples. Find out more by speaking to a specialist today at 888-288-9834 or visit our contact page here.
