SIR: There have been many reports in the national press about the effects of lockdown and the disturbing way it has affected mental health particularly on children.

We must also consider adults. The Chronicle reported February 4 on the suicide of Kevin Primmer with a shotgun. On page 27 the Chronicle reported the death of Philip Hindmarsh, 62, who was formerly a zookeeper at Marwell. He killed himself in a car crash.

In the Chronicle of February 11 there was a report on Jocelyn Stewart, 38, who killed himself, in May 2020, as had Mr Primmer and Mr Hindmarsh as the Lockdown had started. In eight days the Chronicle has reported on three suicides.

I have an interest as my father attempted suicide three times in the mid-1980s. He was seen by Dr. Olivieri an excellent psychiatrist, and he made a full recovery. Dr Olivieri was Italian and worked first in Chichester and Portsmouth before coming to Winchester to work in old age psychiatry in 1984. Sadly Dr Olivieri died in 2004 aged only 57.

There is a very good department at Winchester hospital for dealing with mental health issues Melbury Lodge, where they have named a ward after Dr Olivieri. I went to see the son of friends of mine who was treated there, having become a recovering drug addict after a low period in Australia.

We should be able to talk about mental health issues more freely, certainly endogenous depression, which means without an apparent or obvious cause, as happened to my father, there was no attributable cause, unlike the suicides most recently reported in the Chronicle when the lockdown must have affected them.

Rupert Pitt,

St Cross Road,

Winchester