Depression spikes during the pandemic

A new analysis by the Office for National Statistics published today reveals a stark rise in the share of British adults reporting moderate to severe depressive symptoms during the coronavirus pandemic. Estimated rates almost doubled in June this year when compared to Opinions and Lifestyle Survey results from July 2019 to March 2020. As this infographic shows, 13 percent of adults also said that they had explicitly developed such symptoms during the pandemic.

Tim Vizard, Principal Research Officer at the ONS added: "Adults who were young, female, unable to afford an unexpected expense or disabled were the most likely to experience some form of depression during the pandemic.”

When interpreting these results, it is important to be aware of the following note of caution from the report: "While the presence of a given characteristic may contribute to the development of depressive symptoms in adults, the presence of depression in adults may affect the characteristic in question. It is also important to note that there could be a variety of reasons for change in depressive symptoms before and during the pandemic, rather than this solely being a result of the coronavirus pandemic."