Here's a handy guide to dealing with people who speak about their struggles with the mental health.
Don't say "you are bringing shame to your family" or "you are probably faking it" or "it's not real". Basically, if you can imagine the Daily Mail using whatever phrase as part of yet another attack thread on woke Harry and Megan, then simply don't use it.
Just stop. Think for a second "What the fuck is my endgame here?" "What the fuck does it look like"? Because we have done this dance before. When everything is fair game until somebody is dead. And then we will wring our hands and have a big state funeral party.
I don't really care about the Royals. The 'firm'. That's not being an anti-monarchist. I just don't really care who did what to who, whose opening what, wearing which frock.
But when people come out and talk openly about their struggles with mental health, whether that is on Oprah or in my place, I do care. In that moment. About them.
When we buy into the current attack formation of the tabloids, we buy into the thread that links mental health resiliency with toxic masculinity. That writes in a narrative of weakness and wokeness on a guy that served tours in Afghanistan until the tabloids blew his cover. Who had the balls and the money and the celebrity support to get out. Most people who suffer from poor mental health don't have that.
But that's not on him.
Maybe if we stepped back just for one second, stepped back from a desire to sell papers and pap shots, maybe we could learn a lesson we deliberately chose to ignore twenty five years ago. But hey - its fucking Fleet Street. Busy ripping the BBC a new one on from the top of their sanctimonious shit pile of hypocrisy.
So I guess that's a no then.
So what should you say? try "hey buddy, if you want to talk I'm here. No pressure. No judgment. Talking through things doesn't always help. But sometimes it does and sometimes that's enough."