James Middleton Says He 'Pushed' Family Away During Dark Time When He Almost Took His Own Life

Mar. 15, 2025

James Middleton arrives at the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on May 6, 2023 in London, England.Photo:Andrew Milligan - WPA Pool/Getty

Andrew Milligan - WPA Pool/Getty

“I contemplate ways of dying so I can get off the giddy roller-coaster that is sending me to the brink of madness. I cannot sleep because my mind is in tumult,” he wrote in the book,set to be published on Sept. 24in the U.S.

“The insomnia is dizzying. I am utterly exhausted. I feel misunderstood; a complete failure. I wouldn’t wish the sense of worthlessness and desperation, the isolation and loneliness, on my worst enemy. I think I’m going crazy.”

“Yet I know I am privileged; fortunate, too, to have a loving and close-knit family — Mum and Dad, my sisters Catherine and Pippa, their husbandsWilliamand James — but I push them all away,” James, the younger brother of the Princess of Wales, continued. “I do not answer their phone calls. Emails remain ignored. Invitations to visit go unheeded. I hide behind a double-locked door, unreachable.”

James Middleton attends the launch of the 200th Burlington Christmas at Burlington Arcade on Nov. 12, 2019.David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty

David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty

James then reflected on a night in November 2017 when he reached his “lowest ebb” — as he considered “jumping from the rooftop” of a building in London.

“As I pace, I look down through the skylight and see my spaniel Ella’s gentle eyes looking back up at me. Like me, she has been wakeful all night. She senses my strange, agitated state of mind.”

As he wrote in the excerpt, he then saw his dog “imploring me with her eyes to come down” from a ladder and he considered what life would be like if he and the spaniel didn’t have each other. After an hour of him pacing, he wrote, Ella had still “not moved.”

“I haul myself back from the brink, slowly climb down the ladder and stroke Ella’s silky head. She is the reason I do not take that fatal leap,” James wrote. “She is Ella, the dog who saved my life.”

Alizee Middleton and James Middleton attend the switch on of Bulgari’s iconic Serpenti Christmas lights on November 12, 2021 in London, England.David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty

James announcedMeet Ellaback in March, noting in anInstagramvideo, where he proudly held up the first manuscript, that he and his dog were “inseparable for 15 years” before her death in 2023.

“I know many of you have your own Ellas or might be in need of one. I hope this book will also help us to talk more openly about our mental health, our need for connection and the way in which the animals that we think we are taking care of are actually looking after us in return,” he said at the time.

Ella died in January 2023 following a “short illness,” James revealed at the time.

“Another of the reasons that I wanted to write this book was so that I could tell Inigo the story of how I met his mother,” James told the outlet, the story being that hisdog ran up to Thevenet at a restaurant.

If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.

source: people.com