According to the NHS Inform website, anxiety disorders are estimated to affect between five and 19 per cent of all children and adolescents, and between two and five per cent of children younger than 12 years. 

The mental health charity Young Minds states that the measures taken to limit the spread of Covid-19 infections, while necessary to save lives, are having a negative impact on young people’s mental health and the services that support them, and there are likely to be long-term consequences.

The charity conducted a series of surveys as the pandemic progressed, with the first in March 2020 revealing that over 80 per cent of young people with mental health needs felt their mental health had deteriorated. By the summer, nearly 90 per cent of respondents felt lonely or isolated during the lockdown, and nearly a third said that the support they had previously been able to access had disappeared. In the autumn, nearly 70 per cent of those surveyed considered their mental health to be poor and almost a quarter felt that there was less support available in school than there had been pre-pandemic.