@@KensingtonRoyal/Twitter(LONDON) – -Prince William, Princess Kate, and Prince Harry have invested 2 million pounds of their Royal Foundation funds in the second phase of their Heads Together campaign, which is designed to create online tools to help people with mental health.
The grant represents the single largest donation their foundation has made since it was established in 2011.
The digital mental health start-up will develop new tools to help people have conversations about mental health. pic.twitter.com/oUM48LbaKs
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 8, 2017
The 2 million pound grant will help create a “start up for digital mental health innovation,” including digital assets and signposts to “smash the stigma” of mental health, Prince William announced. The new startup aims to provide tools for conversation and encourage those who might otherwise be reluctant to get the help they need.
The organization that the grant will establish aims to create “digital solutions for mental health,” according to the Heads Together foundation. Prince William said he hopes to create a “metaphorical barrier” which will allow those who are lacking in proper mental health treatment “to bring them into the fold and give them the help they need.”
In the coming months, Heads Together will tackle mental issues in the military, the workplace and for young men. Approximately 75 percent of suicides in the United Kingdom are by young men, Heads Together says.
Experts at the market research firm YouGov, who tracked 14,000 individuals and experts from Heads Together’s eight charity partners, note that Prince Harry’s admission that he too struggled with his own mental health after the 1997 death of his mother, the late Princess Diana, has encouraged other men to seek help and start a conversation.
The royal trio have spent the last year campaigning for young and old people to start conversations at home, among friends and in schools, and encouraged children to speak up and ask for help before mental health problems escalate.
“You’d struggle to find a parent out there who wouldn’t want the well-being of their child to be taken care of at school,” Prince William said Friday at Imperial College in London.
Roughly 50 million people have viewed the royals’ “OK to Say” campaign since 2016, while 19 million watched Prince William’s conversation with Lady Gaga about mental health in April.
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