Pop songstress Lady Gaga and British royal Prince William have teamed up for a video in an attempt to normalise discourse around what has traditionally been a taboo subject: mental health.
The pair are joining forces as part of a campaign by Kensington Palace called Heads Together, which is designed to provide veterans, young people, emergency response workers and the homeless with mental health assistance.
In the video, which shows Gaga speaking to the Prince over FaceTime, she discusses her own mental health battle, and talks about why she felt compelled to join the campaign.
Speaking about the previous work the campaign had undertaken, which saw the creation of films that told the stories of every day people's mental health struggles, the 'Just Dance' hitmaker said their stories had reminded her of "how my mental health changing changed my life".
While the video was clearly something that had been planned out well in advance of the conversation actually taking place, their chat seemed genuine and Lady Gaga felt free to open up on her struggles.
"For me, waking up every day feeling sad and having to go on stage is very hard to describe," she said.
"There's a lot of shame attached to mental illness - you feel like something's wrong with you. In my life I look at all these beautiful things that I have and [think] 'I should be so happy'.
"But you can't help it when in the morning 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."
Gaga says part of the healing process for her was accepting that her mental illness was part of her - and she explained that she felt as though there was "less hiding" from those who suffer from such issues.
The video comes less than two days after Prince Harry spoke out about the pain of losing his mother, Princess Diana, in a car accident 20 years ago.
In an interview with Bryony Gordon for her podcast Mad World, he said her death had "a quite serious effect" on his mental health, leading to grief and anxiety he didn't address until his late 20s.
Lady Gaga and Prince William will meet up in October this year to discuss how to tackle mental health problems.
Watch the full video below.
If you wish to talk to someone about mental illness, you can call Lifeline on 0800 543 354.
Newshub.
