The Colorado Sun reports on Colorado teens urging the state’s next governor to make youth mental health a top priority. The story features Colorado Springs students Swarali Dhamal, Siddharth Dodda, and Arianna Montoya, who describe academic pressure, social media comparison, stigma, and a shortage of accessible support as major forces weighing on students.
The article also includes warnings from Dr. K. Ron-Li Liaw of Children’s Hospital Colorado, who says the flow of young people in mental health crisis has not slowed. The Sun reports that the suicide rate among Colorado kids ages 10 to 18 dropped in 2024 to its lowest point since 2007, but hospitals still see children waiting in emergency rooms or medical beds because there are not enough appropriate mental health placements.
This is a serious Colorado problem, not another soft-focus “kids speak truth to power” feature where everyone leaves with a tote bag and a grant application. Kids are struggling. Parents are scared. Schools are overwhelmed. And too many adults in charge keep mistaking awareness campaigns for treatment.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado teens told The Colorado Sun they want the next governor to take youth mental health seriously, especially by improving access to support before students land in crisis. Radical concept: help before the emergency room.
- The article reports that Children’s Hospital Colorado has seen students stuck waiting for higher levels of care because beds and placements are not available. That is not a “system gap.” That is a child in distress sitting in bureaucratic traffic.
- A coalition of more than 60 organizations is pushing ideas such as a chief children’s mental health officer, an interagency commission, and a dedicated state fund. Colorado has never met a crisis it could not surround with titles, acronyms, and catered listening sessions.
- Students pointed to real pressures: grades, college preparation, social media, stigma, and the sense that they must simply tough it out. They are not asking for pity. They are asking adults to stop confusing exhaustion with resilience.
- Teens also said existing resources like Colorado’s “I Matter” program need better visibility. That is a familiar government special: create a program, name it like a bumper sticker, then hope families somehow discover it while their kid is falling apart.
My Bottom Line
The teens in this story deserve to be heard. Not worshipped. Not turned into campaign props. Heard. They are describing a real problem in plain language: kids are under pressure, help is hard to find, and too often the system wakes up only after a crisis becomes loud enough to scare everybody.
The target here is not the students. It is the grown-up machinery around them. State agencies, school bureaucracies, politicians running for governor, and the nonprofit-policy complex have a bad habit of turning every crisis into a statewide plan, a commission, a dashboard, and a room full of people nodding gravely while nothing measurable changes. Compassion is not the same as bureaucracy.
The next governor should answer simple questions. How will Colorado reduce wait times for real care? How will parents be supported instead of sidelined? How will schools become safer, calmer, and less chaotic? How will money be tied to outcomes instead of intentions? Colorado has mastered spending. Results remain a rumor.
A kid in crisis does not need a slogan. They need help that shows up before the emergency room visit, the disciplinary file, the overdose scare, or the tragedy everyone later calls unforeseeable. This is not a job for culture-war chest thumping or progressive therapy-speak fog. It is a job for competent government, accountable schools, involved parents, and enough humility to admit the system is failing too many kids while congratulating itself in fluent committee.
Source: Colorado Sun
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