Health leaders have warned that millions of patients face dangerously long waits for mental health care unless a recovery plan to tackle a ‘second pandemic’ of depression, anxiety, psychosis and eating disorders is made.

The heads of the NHS Confederation and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have told the Guardian that the current coronavirus pandemic has sparked a dramatic rise in the numbers of people experiencing mental health problems, with 1.6 million waiting for specialised treatment and another eight million who cannot get on the waiting list but would benefit from support.

It is being reported that specialist mental health services in some parts of the country are so overwhelmed they are ‘bouncing back’ even the most serious cases of patients at risk of suicide, self-harm and starvation to the GPs that referred them, prompting warnings from doctors that some patients will likely die as a result.

The NHS Confederation is calling for an expansion of NHS estates for specialist mental health care, and a major recruitment drive, as part of a recovery plan. One in 10 consultant psychiatrist posts are unfilled.

Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “We are moving towards a new phase of needing to ‘live with’ coronavirus but for a worrying number of people, the virus is leaving a growing legacy of poor mental health that services are not equipped to deal with adequately at present.

“With projections showing that 10 million people in England, including 1.5 million children and teenagers, will need new or additional support for their mental health over the next three to five years it is no wonder that health leaders have dubbed this the second pandemic. A national crisis of this scale deserves targeted and sustained attention from the government in the same way we have seen with the elective care backlog.”

Dr Adrian James, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “We urgently need a fully funded mental health recovery plan, backed by a long-term workforce plan, to ensure everyone with a mental illness can get the help they need when they need it. Millions of children, young people and adults are seeking help from mental health services that are overstretched and under-resourced. The situation is critical. The government cannot afford to neglect mental health recovery any longer.”