The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are fronting a new campaign looking at mental health issues amid the coronavirus pandemic.
They have been interviewed on the BBC about the scheme, called “Every Mind Matters.”
Here is the transcript.
Q: How are you helping get the message out there with Every Mind Matters?
Duke of Cambridge: “So Every Mind Matters obviously is in its second guise now coming out – we got a lot of feedback from the NHS and from others that people were accessing the online plan, so we felt very strongly that now more than ever this was a vital tool and a vital service that people could easily access at home to guide them and give them just some very basic tips to mind their mental health, to mind their mental wellbeing through this process.
“I think again staying connected, staying positive and being able to talk to friends and family is so crucial and having just some tips and some ideas as to how to tackle some of these strange feelings and difficult circumstances we’re finding ourselves in is really important, just to nudge us through these next few weeks.”
Asked about frontline workers:
Duke of Cambridge: “What I’ve heard is about the fact that in many of these cases obviously NHS workers, frontline workers are used to dealing sadly with very sad situations, death and things like that but I think the scale and the speed of what’s going on in hospitals, bearing in mind also the isolation, a lot of these patients are dying with no family members around them.
“I think for the NHS frontline workers that is very difficult, because they are there right next to the bedsides, looking after and caring for each and every patient in a critical condition and I think they take away that pain and that sometimes that fear and loneliness that these patients have to go through, they’re the ones who absorb that and take it home to their families and I think again, I’ve spoken about the attrition and the daily attrition rate of that happening to somebody is not normal and we’re not super human any of us, so to be able to manage those emotions and that feeling is going to take some time after all this is over as well.”
Q: Do you think this will fundamentally change who we are and what we value?
Duchess of Cambridge: “Yeah, absolutely, I think what we’re saying now is the NHS and the frontline workers are doing the most extraordinary job and that’s really come to the forefront in the last few weeks and I think it’s going to dramatically change how we all value and see our frontline workers and I think that is one of the main positives that you can take from this.
“They do an extraordinary job it does unrecognised daily and now I think all of us as a nation can really see how hard they work and how vital their work is.”
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