Is This the End of The British Stiff Upper Lip?
Not so long ago, Prince William, already an advocate for the promotion of better mental health, gave a warning to others in an interview, stating that "keeping a stiff upper lip" should not be "at the expense of your health." Indeed, with the death of their mother, Princess Diana, in 1997, both William and his brother, Prince Harry, seem not to be strangers to the swinging scale that mental health can sometimes be. Harry has said that he went for counselling after repressing his grief over his mother's death, a bottling-up of emotion which ended, he remarked, in two years of anger, anxiety and "total chaos." Indeed, it might be said that Diana's funeral was not only a turning point for her children, but for the nation as a whole. The massive outpouring of grief shown on that day by the usually restrained British public perhaps marked the end of the era of the British stiff upper lip. As grown men cried in the streets, all notions of British reserve