Prince Harry says he was depressed after leaving the UK with Meghan Markle and Prince Archie

Prince Harry has revealed he “sank into depression” after fleeing the UK with Meghan Markle and their son Prince Archie in 2019.

During a new MasterClass session ‘Redefining Grief: Building Resilience Through Loss’, hosted by neuroscientist and university professor Dr Mary-Frances O’Connor, the Duke of Sussex said he felt an “adrenaline rush” when the family arrived in Canada at that time.

“Being in Canada, away from the stressful environment where my body was probably full of adrenaline, within two or three days I experienced this adrenaline rush, something I had never experienced before,” Harry, 42, said.

The “Spare” author explained that he realized he “needed stress to get the adrenaline needed for my brain to function because I was becoming useless at home.”

“I actually fell into depression for about two weeks and felt like I couldn’t function without adrenaline,” he added.

Harry and Markle, 45, began living in Canada with their then-baby son in late 2019. They stayed there for several months after announcing they were stepping back from royal duties in January 2020.

The couple and Archie then moved to Montecito, California, where their daughter Lilibet was born in June 2021.

In August, the family of four returned to the UK.

During his MasterClass, Harry reflected on his feeling of “absolute panic” while carrying out public duties in the UK.

“I started to realize that I was seriously exhausted when just putting on a simple dress shirt — the tightening of the collar — literally made me feel like I was suffocating, and I was having panic attacks just in the car on the way to work,” he said.

“And that’s when I realized, okay, there’s something bigger, there’s something else you need to address here.”

Harry also said his “biggest anxiety” while working as a royal was the “fear of sweating.”

“It was the fear that people would see me disheveled and that I wouldn’t be able to explain to them in a short sentence what’s really going on,” he explained. “I would feel like I was in a boxing match.”

Elsewhere during the interview, Harry shared that joining the army at age 20 was the “perfect distraction” from grieving the tragic death of his mother, Princess Diana.

“For 15, 20 years, when people asked me: “Are you okay? My response was, ‘I’m fine,'” recalls Harry, who was 12 when his mother died. “It was a numbing, an emotional shutdown. And without knowing it, the adrenaline was pushing me, driving me.”

Harry admitted that his “post-traumatic stress was not related” to his military tour in Afghanistan, but that the experience “seemed to be a trigger for other trauma that had built up inside me.”

As Page Six previously reported, the Sussexes returned to England to be closer to Harry’s cancer-stricken father, King Charles III.

But Charles, 77, made it clear the couple lived in the UK as “private citizens with business and charitable interests” and not as royals.

Harry gave an update on life in the UK last month, saying “it’s great to be back on British soil” at an Invictus Games charity event in London.

He also confirmed that his two children “are in school” and that the family is “happy.”