LeAndra Martin sits down for a break as her co-teacher quizzes the class at the Thea Bowman Center on how to de-escalate mental health crises.
On this day, many of Martin’s students are employees of Cleveland social service agencies, like women’s shelters or job centers. They are ready to learn the basics of how to identify and respond to signs of mental illness and substance use disorders. Some are also just interested residents: teachers, professors, parents.
It’s the third mental health first aid training Martin has taught since getting certified last November. She started her career coaching college, high school and youth women’s basketball. In 13 years as a coach, she observed the need for mental health help amongst her players grow and grow.
“My last two years coaching college, I almost lost a player to a mental health crisis,” Martin said. “And when that happened, I didn’t know what to do. And I was kind of thrown into a pretty extreme mental health case.”
Last year, after the crisis, she decided to take a break from coaching. She went to get trained in mental health first aid. That way she could help other coaches navigate mental health crises amongst young athletes.
Martin’s observation matches new data about depression rates within the City of Cleveland:
Adults who reported having been diagnosed with depression by a health professional increased by about 60% from 2015 to 2025. Young adults – specifically, 18- to 34-year-olds – had a higher depression rate than any other adult age group.
The data shows mental health declined significantly across the city over the past 20 years, said Stephanie Pike Moore, an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University and an author of the recently produced data.
“People are not doing well,” Pike Moore said.
Pike Moore said that self-diagnoses by young people stemming from social media usage may play a small role in the uptick, the growth in depression rates is significant enough that it shows high levels of mental health problems among younger adults.
The recent data comes from a health survey of about 1,500 Clevelanders, representing all 34 of the city’s neighborhoods. Cleveland’s public health department and the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods worked in conjunction to send out about 109,000 postcards to residents to get residents to participate.
Cleveland outpaces national depression rates
The uptick in depression rates fits in with national trends. A Gallup poll found that the rate of adults who report having been diagnosed with depression increased by ten percentage points from 2015 to 2023.
Nationally, much of the increase has been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and its wake. It led to more isolation, particularly in young people, Pike Moore said.
And in Cleveland, adults under 50 were significantly more likely than older adults to report sometimes, usually or always feeling lonely, recent data shows. Only about a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds reported never or rarely feeling lonely.
Martin saw this among young people she coached, who came out of the pandemic “a little socially awkward,” she said. They had gone through one to two years with fewer face-to-face interactions and relied largely on texting instead.
“When we would sit down and have that face-to-face conversation, there was a huge disconnect,” Martin said. “So I found that texting them or having them write something and then bring it to our meeting – and that’s how they express themselves – was a lot more helpful in the long run.”
Cleveland Documenter Cassie Park has more about youth and mental health from the May 13 Cuyahoga County Council meeting, including:
- An agreement for the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Program in 2025.
- Council Member Sunny Simon said funds are limited for early childhood mental health needs.
But the whole world experienced the pandemic, and Cleveland’s depression rates clock in significantly higher than in Ohio and the United States overall, the survey found.
Cassey Fye, a licensed social worker and the program director at Cleveland’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said when people’s needs aren’t met, it can increase symptoms of depression. Cleveland’s poverty rate is the second-highest in the nation amongst big cities, trailing only Detroit.
“How many people are, you know, struggling to maintain housing? Or, how do I maintain a job when I can’t afford child care?” Fye said. “ … We know poverty really breeds a lot of hopelessness.”
A number of other stressors occur at a higher rate in Cleveland, such as homicides and gun violence. Gwen Davis is the leader of a youth advocacy group called ICONS that focuses on gang prevention and intervention. She said she sees the mental health consequences of violence within many Cleveland high schools.
“We’ve got a lot of people with unaddressed trauma, right?” Davis said. “Say someone within the school was murdered or died in the neighborhood. You think the next day they have like grief counselors there for the kids, all that kind of thing. … That doesn’t happen in a lot of, most of, our schools.”
More depression diagnoses could mean less mental health stigma
Several mental health providers and advocates said that increasing rates of depression diagnoses could simultaneously mean a lessening of stigma around mental health.
“If stigma is lessening and people are feeling comfortable to seek help, we’re going to see an increase of rates because more people are seeking treatment,” said Fye.
In the last three years, Fye said, attendance at NAMI’s support groups has only grown. A helpline the organization runs to connect residents with mental health resources received about twice the number of contacts in 2024 as it did in 2021.
Fye also said more primary care doctors are doing regular screenings for depression at annual checkups, which would boost the diagnosis rate.
Jerome Cash, a licensed professional counselor, has also seen a willingness amongst youth and adults to be more vulnerable and discuss mental health. Cash holds a mental health discussion series called “Holding Space” for Black men and provides mental health programming in local high schools. He said students at Glenville High School were “one of the best cohorts” he’s worked with because of their vulnerability.
“They talk about things that were going on in their day-to-day lives,” Cash said. “They talk about the stress from holidays and dysfunctional families and them not wanting to be with their families during that time.”
Cash credits social media and pop culture for fostering conversations about mental health. Movies like “Inside Out” aim to normalize a wide range of emotions.
“That was beneficial for not only children, but I think a lot of adults got more than the children,” Cash said.
Martin – the mental health first aid trainer – also saw the young athletes she worked with become more comfortable discussing mental health. That’s a good thing, she said. The course she teaches encourages people to proactively ask each other about their mental health and well-being.
But Martin said the next challenge is securing mental health resources that her athletes – and everyone else – can easily turn to when they need help.
“It’s one thing that we’re talking about it now, but it’s also … where do we turn when we need said help?” Martin said. “So it’s talked about but it’s not – we’re missing that second part of the actual help.”