Nearly one in five British adults has likely experienced some form of depression during the coronavirus lockdown, almost double the figure from a year earlier, according to new figures.
A report from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) published on Wednesday estimated that 19.2 percent of adults had experienced a form of depression in June this year, compared to 9.7 percent between July 2019 and March 2020.
One in eight adults, or 12.9 percent, developed moderate to severe symptoms while 6.2 percent continued to experience such symptoms, according to the report. People aged 16 to 39, women, people with disabilities and people unable to afford an unexpected expense were most likely to experience these feelings.
The ONS also found that levels of anxiety, which had been much higher in March compared to before the pandemic, began to decline as the lockdown took hold in spring. However, anxiety levels started increasing again through September and October with the beginning of the second wave.
Loneliness peaked in mid-June, when about a fifth of adults said they felt lonely. The ONS report makes a distinction between “chronic loneliness†and “lockdown loneliness,†recording no significant change in the former so far but finding that more than 30 percent of adults had been affected by “lockdown loneliness.â€
