AS Scotland went into lockdown, Natasha – who has struggled with serious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), depression and anxiety – felt a strange sense of calm descend.

She feared the virus itself. But while many also panicked about isolation, loneliness and the devastating consequences on their livelihoods restrictions would bring, she had a realisation– she was used to living with some of this.

Her mental health conditions have been cripplingly severe since she was 20, leaving her in a sort of self-imposed semi-lockdown for seven years.

“It’s a very different experience for everyone,” she stresses, “But generally I feel the world is always moving so fast and everyone is progressing so quickly. When you have depression it can feel that everyone’s life is so much greater than yours.

“Suddenly I wasn’t hearing the traffic. I knew everyone was stuck in the house like me.”

Natasha counts herself fortunate to belong to the Glasgow-based mental health peer support group Time Out Scotland, which has moved its weekly Wednesday meeting online. And there she found she was not alone.

“It’s about 50/50,” she says. “About half of us are cooped up a lot because of our anxiety, which makes it difficult to go out. The other half really need to be out to cope with their feelings of anxiety. I really feel for those people.

“For me though I wonder if maybe other people now have more of a sense of what my life is like. So many people are struggling with not being able to see friends, or going here or there. I suddenly realise how much I’ve been missing.”

Long-held anger about the lack of suitable treatment offered – which she says is why she turned to Time Out last September – is surfacing. Now she wants to see an end to six-month-long waits to see a string of services that don’t seem to lead to any meaningful change and medication-only treatments that don’t work in isolation.

“I saw something on Twitter from a psychiatrist noting that millions die of this virus and that is terrible,” she says. “But she was pointing out millions also die by suicide – why haven’t we addressed that? I just want mental health to be prioritised.”

Next week Mental Health Awareness Week will be marked across the country, with a global backdrop like no other.

Yesterday the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned that services could be overwhelmed by “a tsunami of mental illness”. It claimed adults and children with no history of mental ill-health are developing serious psychological problems during lockdown, including psychotic episodes, mania and depression.

Last week the World Health Organisation voiced similar concerns.

Over the last two months Scottish charities have been warning that as restrictions lift, a ticking time bomb of a mental health crisis is likely to be revealed. Services were under-resourced and creaking at the seams long before.

Earlier in May Breathing Space – Scotland’s free phone and online chat service for anyone experiencing depression or anxiety – reported a record number of calls.

A survey of social care workers by the trade union GMB Scotland found four in every five said their mental health had already been damaged by their work.

A YouthLink Scotland survey of 2400 young people found more than three-quarters were worried about the impact of coronavirus on their mental health.

The Scottish Government is alert to the escalating need – earlier this month it announced an additional £1 million to fund counselling and support services. But is it enough?

READ MORE: Routes out of Lockdown: 'Blended learning' could become the norm in schools

GORDON McFarlane, vice-chair of Time Out Scotland who has suffered from depression for many years, also believes the pandemic will reveal a growing need.

“Mental health issues are connected with isolation anyway,” he says. “Now people are facing forced isolation with no end in sight. I’m not saying we need a response to that – we need to come out of lockdown the right way. But it does add anxiety, concern and worry for people already struggling with concern and worry.”

And while he has also found positive points in the lockdown experience – less crowded spaces and shops mean his anxiety is less triggered – he acknowledges that for some with existing conditions the situation may be exacerbating symptoms.

“Everyone is having these difficulties now,” he says. “But people with mental health problems tend to over-analyse that and it gets under the skin a lot easier. When you don’t have a distraction you tend to ruminate on it for a lot longer.

“It worries me for people that don’t know, don’t have other sources of support. I have heard about people taking their own lives because they just can’t cope.”

The issue has also been highlighted by the Scottish Human Rights Commission’s reference group, who in an “evidence from experience” briefing earlier this month, identified managing mental health and wellbeing during the crisis as the key challenge. All have experiences of poverty.

At the end of April, group members reported speaking to friends and contacts with long-standing mental health needs who were feeling suicidal because of the restrictions on daily life.

It also called for those in need of help to receive in-person support for mental health, where the support worker had PPE and respected social distancing, in the same way as would be the case with a physical health condition.

Judith Robertson, chair of the commission, says: “Their experiences underscore just how important it is for responses to Covid-19 to be informed by human rights, both now and as we begin to move towards a “new normal”. Their report gives testament to the fact that some people’s rights are more at risk than others and government action must address this as we go forward.”

Research from the Mental Health Foundation, which co-ordinates Mental Health Awareness Week, supports this finding.

Its UK-wide study, which has been running since March and includes responses from around 2000 Scots, suggests about a third of those in employment are worried about work, but it’s the mental health of those who are unemployed that is causing most concern. Of those who answered the survey, 15% had suicidal thoughts.

Lee Knifton, the foundation’s Scottish director, says: “We’ve been hearing a lot of stories about how difficult life is for people with anxiety, depression, psychosis and this situation risks piling the pressure on. The risk is we see a real surge [of demand for services] on the other side. At a time when services are under pressure we now need to plan for that very carefully. The direct support charities are doing everything we can – there is just an amazing response to try and do things digitally, to still go to people when they are in crisis.

“But as a sector, mental health is desperately under-resourced. It has been historically and it still is. There’s no parity at all in terms of the provision

“What we really need to do is invest more to support people so they can be equal citizens so they are more resilient to whatever comes along.”

Tomorrow the charity will publish polling results about attitudes to kindness and mental health. “A high proportion of people say they want a kinder society," adds Knifton. “There's a public desire there. We have to think about what that means for policy too. Kindness as policy has to be about ensuring dignity and respect for people.”

To Natasha that means being listened to, not dismissed or fobbed off, but getting the treatment she needs to start living the life she feels she has been denied for so long. “There is a feeling that hopefully if we can get through this, we can use this opportunity to make some real changes here,” she says. “Because that is what we desperately need.”