Prince Harry said he was met with 'total silence or total neglect' when he asked the royal family to help Meghan Markle

• Prince Harry said the royals didn't help Meghan when she received racist press treatment.
• Harry spoke about the experience in the new mental-health documentary series "The Me You Can't See."
• The duke said he assumed his family would help but was met with "total silence" instead.

The Duke of Sussex said he received "total silence" from the royal family when Meghan Markle struggled with racist treatment from the British media.

Prince Harry spoke in the new mental-health documentary series "The Me You Can't See" about how the press and social-media trolls affected Markle's mental health during her time as a working royal.

The series, for which Harry served as cocreator and executive producer alongside Oprah Winfrey, is available to stream on Apple TV+ starting Friday.

"Within the first eight days of our relationship being made public was when they said 'Harry's girl is (almost) straight outta Compton' and that her 'exotic DNA will be thickening the royal blood,'" Harry said in the second episode of the series, mentioning racist newspaper headlines written about the duchess in 2016.

Harry said seeing the flashing of cameras made his "blood boil" and reminded him of how his mother, Princess Diana, was treated by the press.

"I felt completely helpless," Harry said. "I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence or total neglect. We spent four years trying to make it work - we did everything we possibly could to stay there doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling."

Harry said he knew his family wouldn't be able to help when Markle experienced suicidal thoughts

The second episode of the mental-health series shows video footage of Markle and Harry at a charity event at London's Royal Albert Hall in early 2019, when the duchess was six months pregnant with their son, Archie.

Harry said that before they attended the event, "Meghan decided to share with me the suicidal thoughts and the practicalities of how she was going to end her life."

"The thing that stopped her seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that happened to my mom, and now to be put in a position of losing another woman in my life with a baby inside of her," Harry said.

He went on to say he was "ashamed" to go to his family for help at the time.

"Because, to be honest with you, like a lot of other people my age can probably relate to, I know I'm not going to get from my family what I need," he added.

The Duchess of Sussex first spoke earlier this year about her experience with suicidal thoughts.

"You have no idea what's going on for someone behind closed doors. No idea," Markle said during her sit-down interview with Winfrey in March.

"Even the people that smile and shine the brightest lights. You need to have compassion for what is actually potentially going on," she added.

Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.