Mental health services face a “tsunami” of cases following the COVID-19 lockdown, a leading psychiatric body has warned.

A survey by the Royal College of Psychiatrists has revealed a 43% increase in urgent and emergency mental health cases since the end of March.

But nearly half of the 1,300 clinicians surveyed had also seen routine appointments cancelled.

Professor Wendy Burn, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “We are already seeing the devastating impact of COVID-19 on mental health with more people in crisis, but we are just as worried about the people who need help now but aren’t getting it.

“Our fear is that the lockdown is storing up problems.”

During lockdown, Gaynor Spence, 43, from Liverpool, has had suicidal thoughts.

“It’s a feeling of being alone, completely alone,” she told Sky News. “It feels like nobody cares.”

Ms Spence has had depression in the past but isolation triggered a new, and horrific, mental health crisis.

“You feel like nobody will understand, and it grows worse because you don’t tell anybody.

“That grows into feelings of ‘no one’s going to miss you’, that no one would even know if you were gone, that there’s no point in even being here.

“And you think (suicide) would just stop the pain of feeling so down and so alone.”

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