Prince Harry Says He “Slipped Into Depression” After Moving to Canada in 2019

Prince Harry has spoken candidly about experiencing depression after he, Meghan Sussex and their then-infant son Archie temporarily moved to Canada in late 2019.

Harry discusses the period in Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss, his new MasterClass with grief neuroscientist Dr Mary-Frances O’Connor. The programme explores grief, trauma and resilience through Harry’s experience of losing his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, when he was 12.  

PEOPLE reports that Harry described arriving on Vancouver Island after years of functioning in an intensely stressful environment:

“Being in Canada, away from the stressful environment where presumably my body was just pumped full of adrenaline, within two or three days, I experienced this adrenaline crash, something that I’d never experienced before,” Harry says.

“It was as if I needed stress in order to get the adrenaline to make my brain function because I became useless around the house,” he continues. “I actually slipped into depression for about two weeks and I felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline.”

Harry said he then “slipped into depression” for roughly two weeks and struggled to function without the adrenaline that had previously kept him going. The family had travelled to Canada seeking space from the pressures surrounding them in Britain, months before Harry and Meghan formally stepped back as senior working royals.  

Harry Is Actually Talking About Grief

Naturally, the Daily Mail turned the revelation into “Harry’s Megxit Depression,” because apparently even a discussion about grief and mental health must somehow be repackaged as another attack on the Sussexes. That framing misses what makes Harry’s conversation worth hearing.

Here is a 42-year-old man publicly explaining how years of unresolved grief affected him physically and emotionally. Harry has previously discussed how military service brought buried trauma back to the surface and how therapy helped him confront grief he had carried since childhood. In the MasterClass, he also discusses panic attacks, emotional numbness and the fear that moving forward with his life might somehow mean leaving his mother behind.

There is something valuable about a man with Harry’s platform saying this plainly. Men still receive plenty of messages telling them to endure pain quietly, stay strong and keep moving. Harry is offering a very different example: acknowledging that something hurt you does not make you weak, and asking for help does not diminish you.

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His reflections on Diana are particularly poignant. Harry has now lived considerably longer without his mother than he ever had with her, and he describes how grief changed not only with time but with memory. At one point, he said he could no longer clearly remember Diana’s laugh or even what she looked like, and felt that staying sad was somehow proof that he still missed her.

Therapy eventually helped him reconnect with those memories, including through familiar scents such as his mother’s perfume. More importantly, Harry says he came to understand that moving forward did not mean leaving Diana behind. He eventually recognised that his mother would want him to be happy, rather than remain permanently defined by the loss. To me, that is one of the healthiest things he has ever said publicly about her.

Finding Joy, Purpose and Balance After Grief

Harry also links that healing to the life he has built with Meghan and their children. He says the “biggest factor” in his happiness is the joy he gets from being with his family, alongside the sense of purpose he finds in his work. He has even set himself a practical rule: no more than 10 days away from Meghan and the children.

That balance between family and purpose also runs through the MasterClass itself. Its launch supports Scotty’s Little Soldiers and Comfort Zone Camp, organisations that help bereaved children and young people.

For Harry, healing does not seem to mean forgetting Diana or remaining defined by grief. It means building a life around family, purpose and happiness while using his own experience to help others. To me, that is a far more meaningful continuation of Diana’s legacy than endlessly performing grief for public consumption.