Except they didn’t say that. It was reported that way, but it’s not what they said. They said they *weren’t willing* let their thoughts or emotions out—that’s not the same as saying no one tryed to get them to do so or offered them the help they needed. I’m pretty sure Harry specifically said he had therapy right away but was uncooperative. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink; along the same lines, you can get a grieving teen access to mental health specialists but you can’t make him participate in a meaningful way.
It’s quite telling that the thrust of their mental health campaign (which was the context for those interviews) isn’t about making therapy available so much as it is encouraging people to put aside their fear of talking and access the already available therapeutic resources, because they’re saying that they understand what it is to be too stubborn to participate but have also found that when you let down your guard things can get better. All that says to me that help *was* offered and they wish they’d taken it from the start.
Ah, that makes sense. Hopefully now that someone has pointed out their original words, posters would stop taking it the wrong way.
And yes, totally agree about the issue of timing. Of course the media and others have to sensationalize it for a particular narrative they want to paint. I keep thinking back to all the fury over how dare Harry say it was his brother that encouraged him to seek help in his late twenties as that’s a slight at his father when Harry didn’t mention anything about Charles. And him not mentioning Charles isn’t a slight at Charles. It simply is his moment where the lightbulb went on.