Prince Harry’s Apple TV+ series produced with Oprah Winfrey finally has a release date of Friday, May 21. Entitled “The Me You Can’t See,” the show “‘will help lift the veil’ on mental health and emotional well-being.” As with any project connected with Harry and his wife, it includes interviews with several celebrities, including Glenn Close and Lady Gaga, as well as mental health professionals.

Apple reports that it will “transcend culture, age, gender, and socioeconomic status to destigmatize a highly misunderstood subject and give hope to viewers who learn that they are not alone.”

The information has been released as part of Mental Health Awareness Week. Harry said, “We are born into different lives, brought up in different environments, and as a result are exposed to different experiences.

“But our shared experience is that we are all human. The majority of us carry some form of unresolved trauma, loss or grief, which feels – and is – very personal. Yet the past year has shown us that we are all in this together, and my hope is that this series will show there is power in vulnerability, connection in empathy and strength in honesty.”

As a commentator in The Times London wrote, “I fully understand why everyone hates millennials.”

This comment was made in an article that at first highlighting how “uncool” Meghan Markle is, arguing, “It’s not that her causes aren’t good ones. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with writing a sincere children’s book and dedicating it to your ‘growing flock of rescue chickens.’ Or in pointing out that becoming a royal necessarily restricts your self-expression, ‘like the Little Mermaid.’ ‘It’s just,’ as a friend texted me, ‘that she’s so uncool.’”

The article goes on to commentate on how millennials are just too into their own victim narrative story. Marth Gill writes, “Our hit books are just intense thoughts we have had about our slightly aloof boyfriends. Our hit TV shows are about our failed attempts to stop relying financially on our parents. We write long personal essays about the time a teacher was mean to us in year 3. Pixar, our signature film company, first made films about toys having feelings, then about feelings having feelings (Inside Out), then finally about abstract entities in search of feelings having feelings (Soul). It’s all a bit much.”

Millennials have also ruined certain movie properties, like James Bond by giving a backstory where he’s “traumatized” by the loss of his first love. Or giving a back story to the Joker, a character who previously just lived for terror without reason and now has been in therapy, and now Cruella de Vil in a couple of weeks. 

Other generations are more cynical and had “two modes of expression: irony and smoking.” Or, in the case of the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation, a perspective of just getting on with it despite having gone through the Great Depression and the Second World War. Both events were much more traumatizing than anything most Americans have currently experienced, but without the whining and complaining constantly about how traumatized they are. 

What about going back hundreds of years, to the invasion of Genghis Khan or the Black Death? In comparison to nearly every other generation that walked the earth, millennials have it pretty easy.

But now seemingly innocuous things are distressing and seemingly everything leads to mental health issues. From a mother not packing that particular item in their lunch box to the lack of a dog in childhood.

Though there are no doubt serious trauma that people can experience, and Harry is a great example. He lost his mother and was deeply impacted by her very public loss. However, as the millennial generation, do we overly focus on these matters and obsess over them in an unhealthy way? Do we contribute to our own mental health issues by not engaging in a somewhat healthy amount of cynicism and just trying to move on with our lives?

It’s an interesting argument and perspective. 

Besides, is mental health really that stigmatized anymore? It’s perhaps even so overly discussed that it’s losing some of its impact. 

So how will this series perform? It will attract certain millennials and Oprah devotees, but the general public will most likely give it wide birth—especially as it seems to rely heavily on celebrity culture, which has taken a big hit over the last year or so.

Yes, we all have experiences that have left a deep impact on our lives, but sometimes those issues are best left to a therapist’s office and not a public program. 

Photo from Apple TV+.