Children Having Panic Attacks Meeting Friends After Lockdown

NHS leaders claim that young children across the UK may be suffering from ‘locked-in trauma’ following repeat lockdowns.

Children as young as five years old are having panic attacks about meeting their friends again, according to the NHS.

The Centre for Mental Health (CMH) confirmed at the beginning of the year that over 500,000 healthy children have now been pushed over the edge due to lockdowns and the health crises, causing a surge in the need for mental health support for the first time.

According to sources, NHS waiting lists of up to four years means families have been forced to get help from private psychologists, to then find that they are oversubscribed.

According to leading private therapists, they are receiving twice the number of calls for parents who are worried and that they have had to turn patients away or impose waiting lists for the first time ever.

“As a direct impact of the pandemic,” an extra 1.5 million children and young people will require support for their mental health and wellbeing over the next three to five years, calculations suggest.

Research from the CMH shows that mental health services will reach up to three times its capacity and NHS England director for mental health Claire Murdoch said: “The pandemic has turned young people’s lives upside down.”

Today, June 22, the NHS promised an additional £40 million for children’s mental health services. The news comes after figures in June revealed that the number of people waiting for NHS hospital treatment has risen over five million for the first time since records began.

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