Up until last year, for most bankers in the City and on Wall Street, the word “depression” had a specific, economic meaning.

But since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, it has come to have a much more personal and devastating resonance for an increasing number of financiers.

Rehabilitation clinics on both sides of the Atlantic are experiencing a boom in the number of financial sector workers seeking help for anxiety, depression, stress and addiction-related issues amid colossal redundancy programmes on Wall Street and in the City and severe losses across world capital markets.

The Times has learnt that the Priory, Britain's most famous rehab clinic, estimates that it has experienced a 20 per cent increase in the number of inquiries over the past six months from financial sector professionals, or from their worried spouses, about therapy for stress and addiction.

The Capio Nightingale Hospital, London's only independent mental-health hospital, has reported a 200 per cent surge in treatment inquiries between July and September last year for financiers suffering from depression and stress.

In the United States, Sigurd Ackerman, medical director at Silver Hill Hospital rehabilitation facility in New Canaan, Connecticut - a short commute from Manhattan — said: “We absolutely do see more people coming in naming either a job loss or huge financial reversals or big investments with Bernie Madoff.

“They're being admitted with depression or increases in substance abuse, or both.”

Mr Ackerman said there was a high concentration of financial professionals in the town, 40 miles from New York, whose main streets are lined with high-end boutiques catering to the well-heeled wives of hedge fund managers and bankers.

“You're supposed to be a master of the universe, you're supposed to be on top of everything,” said one financial services executive who began alcohol rehab in August. “There's not a lot of sensitivity training or meetings where you sit around and ask how everyone is feeling,” said the Connecticut executive, who declined to be named. “No one walks around saying: ‘I feel your pain.'”

Speaking to The Times, a spokesman for The Priory said that there had been a surge in the number of City professionals seeking help but that many were not committing to in-patient treatment a month of which costs between £16,000 and £20,000 — because of nervousness about losing their job and their own finances.

“We are getting about five inquiries from the City a week, compared with two a year ago,” he said.

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