Student Mental Health in Colorado Schools

Denver 7 reports on Denver Health expanding its school-based health centers as student mental health needs keep climbing. The article’s premise is simple and heartbreaking: the demand signal from kids is loud, and the adult world is scrambling to catch up.

The piece walks through how Denver Health is scaling services in schools because the need is not theoretical anymore. It is daily. It is visible. It is showing up in anxiety, depression, crisis moments, and the kind of instability that teachers and principals should never be expected to shoulder alone.

And yes, this is tragic, and none too surprising.

The Bullet Point Brief

Kids are growing up in a state where the algorithm has more disciples than the Almighty. That is not “progress.” That is replacement.
We have turned schools into battlegrounds for adult ideology: transgenderism in schools, pronouns, “my truth,” and boys in girls locker rooms. Then we act shocked when kids feel unmoored.
We keep legalizing the next thing and calling it “freedom.” Legal weed. Legal ‘shrooms. And coming soon, if some folks get their way, legal prostitution. When everything is “okay,” nothing is okay.
Mom and dad are working two jobs, sometimes three, just to afford rent and groceries. They are absent, and it is not their fault. It is the economy and the culture eating the family’s margin.
And we are doing all of this in a state where religious connection is thin. Pew’s recent Religious Landscape Study puts Colorado at about 40% religiously unaffiliated, and Colorado Public Radio reported Colorado’s Christian identification around 52% in 2024, below the national figure. That is a lot of unchurched ground for a culture war to run wild on. (Pew Research Center)

My Bottom Line

I have watched the mental health conversation in Colorado swell year after year, and I keep coming back to one ugly reality: we keep treating symptoms while ignoring causes. We throw clinics and programs and slogans at a generation that is starving for something solid, and then we wonder why the floor keeps dropping out.

What is concrete in a child’s life right now? Too often, it is not mom and dad, because they are stretched to the breaking point. Both parents are working – sometimes two jobs – just to keep the lights on and food on the table. It is not community, because community has been replaced by screens. Almighty God has been replaced by the algorithm gods. It is not church, because for a big chunk of Colorado, church has become a cultural afterthought. Colorado has one of the highest unchurched percentages in the nation.

Then we add the policy choices that dissolve boundaries. Legal weed. Legal ‘shrooms. A legislature flirting with legal prostitution. Schools tangled up in identity politics. Adults telling kids that “truth” is personal and morality is negotiable. If everything is permitted, nothing is anchored. If everything is affirmed, nothing is formed.

So, to the legal prostitution bill authors in particular: morality matters. If you want proof, look no further than the status of our kids. You do not have to be a theologian to understand that a culture that cannot say “that is wrong” is a culture that cannot protect the vulnerable.

Here’s me sounding like a boomer again, but I’ll wear it: kids need boundaries. Hard, fast, firm boundaries. Parental, societal, governmental, and yes, spiritual. Boys go to boys locker rooms. Girls go to girls locker rooms. Drugs are bad. Exploitation is bad. And if we cannot collectively recognize that some things are wrong, then we should not act surprised when the next generation is anxious, depressed, and untethered.

Source: Denver 7