More people in the Cumberland Council area are living with depression since the Covid pandemic.

New figures from Public Health England show more than 6.6 million people in England were living with depression in 2022-23, the highest figure since records began in 2012.

A spokesperson for the charity Rethink Mental Illness said the "unsurprising" increase may have been fuelled by the pandemic and cost of living crisis.

In the Cumberland Council area there were 41,683 adults with depression in 2022-23, making up 17.9 per cent of adults in the area registered with a GP.

This was a slight increase on the year before, when it was 17.1 per cent, and more than in 2019-20, before the Covid pandemic, when it was 16.1 per cent.

The figures are based on unresolved diagnoses of depression as recorded on patients' GP records since April 2006. They do not account for those suffering with the condition but still waiting for a formal diagnosis.