Mother Monster has joined the team.
As Prince William, Kate Middleton and Prince Harry continue to shape their joint Heads Together mental health awareness campaign, they've enlisted the help of someone across the pond—Lady Gaga. The pop star, who has been an advocate of the mental health discussion in the United States, appears in a new video released Tuesday where she is face to face with the royal—well, digitally. During their video chat, Prince William asked Gaga how she felt about speaking publicly about her own mental health challenges.
Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace
"It made me very nervous at first," the pop star told the prince. "For me, waking up every day and feeling sad and going on stage is something that is very hard to describe. There's a lot of shame attached to mental illness. You feel like something's wrong with you."
"In my life, I go, 'Oh my goodness, look at all these beautiful, wonderful things that I have. I should be so happy,' but you can't help it it if, in the morning when you wake up, you are so tired, you are so sad, you are so full of anxiety and the shakes that you can barely think," she described.
Despite the difficulty, speaking publicly made all the difference. "It was like saying, 'this is a part of me and that's ok.'"
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Nicky J Sims/Getty Images for Royal Foundation
Now, with the help of her international fame, she's able to catapult their crucial message to millions.
"Even though it was hard, it was the best thing that could come out of my mental illness was to share it with other people and let our generation as well as other generations know that if you are feeling not well in your mind, you are not alone," she told Prince William. "We have to make the strongest most relentless attempt we can to normalize mental health issues, so people feel they can come forward."
In late December, the Grammy winner opened up for the first time about years of wrestling with posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in an open letter shared online.
"It is a daily effort for me, even during this album cycle, to regulate my nervous system so that I don't panic over circumstances that to many would seem like normal life situations," she wrote. "Examples are leaving the house or being touched by strangers who simply want to share their enthusiasm for my music."
It was that letter that caught Prince William's attention and made him want to enlist the star's help in their royal quest to remove the stigmas surrounding mental healthcare. The video is a part of their newly launched #oktosay film series and the father of two also invited Gaga to meet with him in October in London for further conversation on the cause.
As the star perfectly summed it up, "I feel like we are not hiding anymore. We're starting to talk."
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