World Mental Health Day: Meghan Markle describes 'almost unsurvivable' online abuse

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  • October 10, 2020
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The Duchess of Sussex has described the “almost unsurvivable” abuse she has received online on a podcast to mark World Mental Health Day

She appeared on the Teenager Therapy podcast with her husband the Duke of Sussex.

The couple introduced themselves as Harry and Meghan respectively.

The Duchess told the podcast that she was the most trolled person in the world in 2019.

She appeared on the podcast with her husband Harry (AFP via Getty Images)

The pair also discussed loss, grief, and disconnection.

When asked about their recent activism , Harry said mental health discussions needed to broaden to “every single one of us”.

“I think the way everything’s happening in the world right now, the moment that people start to think about mental health, immediately people think about a small group of people as opposed to every single one of us”, he said.

“I think if you could safely say that 90% of people on planet Earth have suffered some form of trauma, some form of loss, some form of grief, and that’s different, it varies to every single person, then certainly for this year, through Covid, I think it’s probably safe to say that 99.9%, if not 100% of people, have experienced some form of one of those, all those, at the same time.

“Rather than mental health being focused on, the people that are struggling, it needs to go much wider than that, and to the acceptance and the appreciation that every single one of us have mental health, and every single one of us have got stuff going on that we either need to talk about or that we need help with, or that we have some form of compassion and empathy for other people that are going through something similar.”

Meghan talked about being the most abused person online in 2019 (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

The Duchess told the podcast about the online abuse she received while she was on maternity leave .

“If you’re not in school then you’re finding yourselves on your devices or online more, right, and there’s a lot of vulnerability there that I think so many people are experiencing”, she said.

“Yes, it’s a great way to connect, but it also ends up being a place where there’s a lot of disconnection, you know, I can speak personally to.”

Harry, Meghan, and their son Archie (PA)

She discussed being the most abused person online in 2019, a year she largely spent on maternity leave.

“I’m told that in 2019 I was the most trolled person in the entire world, male or female. Now, eight months of that I wasn’t even visible, I was on maternity leave or with a baby.

“But what was able to just be manufactured and churned out, it’s almost unsurvivable, that’s so big, you can’t think of what that feels like, because I don’t care if you’re 15 or 25, if people are saying things about you that aren’t true, what that does to your mental and emotional health is so damaging.”

She added: “Part of the work that we do is from our own personal experience, being able to talk to people and understand that, even though our experience is unique to us, and obviously can seem very different to what people experience on the day to day, it’s still a human experience and that’s universal, we all know what it feels like to have our feelings hurt, we all know what it feels like to be isolated or othered.”