Prince William has taken his campaign to increase awareness of mental health problems to Davos.
Global leaders queued for nearly an hour to hear the Duke of Cambridge, who was speaking at the World Economic Forum alongside the New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to call for an end to the stigma that surrounds mental health issues.
The prince suggested the stiff upper lip approach of the wartime generation was responsible for some of the stigma. “Wartime was very, very difficult for everybody,” he said, adding that it was thought “no matter how much you would talk, you were never going to fix the issue”.
Davos is a Swiss ski resort now more famous for hosting the annual four-day conference for the World Economic Forum. For participants it is a festival of networking. Getting an invitation is a sign you have made it – and the elaborate system of badges reveals your place in the Davos hierarchy. The meeting is sponsored by a huge number of international banks and corporations.
For critics, “Davos man” is shorthand for the globe-trotting elite, disconnected from their home countries after spending too much time in the club-class lounge. Others just wonder if it is all a big waste of time.
The 2020 meeting is being advertised as focusing on seven themes: Fairer economies, better business, healthy futures, future of work, tech for good, beyond geopolitics and how to save the planet. Young climate activists and school strikers from around the world will be present at the event to put pressure on world leaders over that last theme.
“A whole generation decided that this was the best way of dealing with it. They then, completely by accident, passed that on to the next generation. So a whole generation inherited [the idea] that this was the way you deal with your problems: you don’t talk about it.”
William said a new generation in the UK was finally realising “this is not normal, we should talk about it”.
Ardern said she had lost friends to suicide. “One of the sad facts for New Zealand is that everyone knows someone who has taken their own life. We’re a small country, of less than 5 million people, but last year more than 600 people committed suicide,” she said.
Ardern has made mental health a key priority for her government, increasing spending and putting specialised mental health nurses in schools across the country.
