Meghan Markle has spoken out on being made to feel "crazy and hysterical", as a way to "minimise" her problems. The Duchess of Sussex, who was speaking in the latest episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes, asked her listeners and celebrity guests to put their hand up if they had felt the same experience.
Meghan said woman like her had been "gaslit" into thinking they are unwell and confessed she struggles to cry as she is "conditioned" to have a certain "kind of composure" - but she just wants to "let it out". The 41-year-old told her listeners: "Raise your hand if you’ve ever been called crazy or hysterical, or what about nuts? Insane, out of your mind, completely irrational, OK? You get the point.
"Now, if we were all in the same room and could see each other, I think it would be pretty easy to see. Just how many of us have our hands up? By the way, me too."
Meghan, whose guests included Indian actress Deepika Padukone, American comedian Jenny Slate and American actress Constance Wu, also discussed the feeling of being ignored.
"Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience and minimises what they’re feeling," she explained.
"It keeps going to the point where anyone who’s been labelled it enough times can be gaslit into thinking that they’re actually unwell or sometimes worse, to the point where real issues of all kinds get ignored. Well that’s not happening today.
"I feel pretty strongly about this word, this label crazy, the way that it’s thrown around so casually and the damage – it’s rotten (for) society and women, frankly everywhere.
"From relationships to families being shattered, the reputations destroyed and careers ruined. The stigma surrounding the word, it also has this silencing effect. This effect, women experiencing real mental health issues, they get scared, they stay quiet, they internalise, and they repress for far too long."
She also said she finds it difficult to cry as she is "conditioned" to have a certain "kind of composure" but she wants to "let it out".
The Duchess cited the word hysteria coming from the Greek for womb, saying: "Plato himself was actually amongst the Greek philosophers, who believed that the womb would travel around the body adding pressure to other organs, which would then lead to erratic and unreliable behaviour.
"By the way, the DSM – the book to diagnose mental disorders – hysteria was an actual medical diagnosis until 1980."
Slate said: "Hysteria, craziness, like it’s a disease of the people with the uteri, like, the people with the emotions.
"It is a definition created by a man. It is a definition meant to shame and limit a certain type of experience."
Meghan, who is said to have been inspired by her podcast to launch a fund to "empower young adults" with a million-dollar (£896,000) scheme to support women in need, also opened up about her "worst point" with her mental health.
She said: "You found the courage to get the help that you needed and to get the help that works for you.
"I think at my worst point being finally connected to someone that you know, my husband had found a referral for me to call and I called this woman, she didn't know, I was even calling her what and she was checking out at the grocery store.
"I could hear the little beep, and I said, hi and I'm introducing myself and like, I could hear her going 'sorry who is this?'.
"And saying I need help, she could hear the dire state that I was in.
"But I think it's for all of us to be really honest about what it is that you need and to not be afraid to make peace with that to ask for it."
You can get help with your mental health and speak to someone through the charity Mind. Click here for more details.
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