Pressure to be perfect hits recent high school graduates Ever since she was in middle school, Swarali Damal has been spending more and more time in and out of school, motivating and suffocating her at the same time.
These days, as carefully curated posts from friends and influencers flood her social media feed, the voices nagging her to be perfect have gotten louder. All along, that voice had driven her to maintain great grades and keep up with her classmates, part of an ever-increasing inherent social pressure.
“Society has kind of normalized the idea that you have to be perfect or achieve something in life to be successful,” said Damal, 18. “And many of my colleagues feel that mental health issues stem from that.
“Some might say there’s room for growth and a push to move forward, but if this constant pressure is always weighing you down, it feels more suffocating than a place for growth,” she added.
The gravitational pull of anything but the best is quietly contributing to Colorado’s student mental health crisis, which has improved in some ways and dramatically worsened in others over time. That’s why both students and state health officials are calling on Colorado’s next governor to make youth mental health one of his top priorities, and on day one, he’s proposing a concrete policy plan to improve children’s access to mental health support.
“If we don’t address this issue, and if the next governor doesn’t address this issue in an appropriate, prioritized and resourceful manner with leadership and accountability from the top of the state, we will lose a generation,” said Dr. K. Ron Lee Liau, director of child and adolescent mental health at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “They’ve already been through COVID-19. They’ve already been through an economic downturn. They’ve been through a lot of conflict here that most children shouldn’t have to go through. They’ve already seen so much. This is our chance as trusted adults, as adults in leadership positions, to turn things around for them.”
The numbers behind children’s ongoing struggle with mental health tell a nuanced story. In 2024, Colorado’s suicide rate for children ages 10 to 18 will be the lowest since 2007. This is a notable change in a state where youth suicide rates have long exceeded the national average. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Office of Suicide Prevention, the number of suicide deaths in the same age group in Colorado in 2024 is 39, a significant decrease from the high of 87 suicide deaths in the same age group in 2020.
Despite the decline, fighting among children remains highly visible and widespread, Liau said. The flow of students seeking help at Children’s Hospital Colorado continues unabated due to mental health crises.
For example, the number of children needing care for behavioral health issues spiked in February, Riau said. At the height of the crisis, the hospital system had at times as many as 30 students requiring higher levels of care, including inpatient care. However, there were not enough beds in the area to accommodate these children, and they were waiting in emergency rooms or medical beds.
She said more than a dozen more children dealing with chronic mental health issues are in long-term hospitalizations because they can’t return to foster care or group homes or the school environment doesn’t meet their needs.
Liau noted that the need for psychiatric help among students has increased throughout the spring. First, this is a season of high stakes and transition. The final weeks of the school year are often a blur filled with standardized tests, final projects and exams, and final grades.
Changes in sunlight and sleep patterns also add stress to children with certain mental health conditions, including mood disorders such as depression, Liau said. Children who often have low energy and feel hopeless in the winter can become manic in the spring. Some students become crippled by sleep deprivation and out-of-control thoughts, while others develop more impulsive behavior and have more energy to act on suicidal thoughts, she said.
Liau said depression is one of the many reasons children come to Children’s Hospital Colorado when they have difficulty managing their mental health on their own. Hospitals are also inundated with young patients suffering from anxiety disorders such as panic attacks and obsessive-compulsive disorder, children with eating disorders and patients self-medicating with unprescribed drugs such as cannabis and pills.
Sounding the alarm, a statewide coalition of more than 60 organizations is advocating for solutions to prevent students from falling into a mental health spiral and reach those already at the bottom of the crisis.
Ahead of Thursday’s gubernatorial forum, where both Democratic and Republican candidates are expected to share their own strategies for better supporting children, coalition leaders from Children’s Hospital Colorado and the nonprofit Healer Colorado have compiled a list of policy recommendations for the state’s next commander. They propose two ideas. One believes governors can take swift action, and the other believes it could lead to a more robust youth mental health system that serves as a safety net for struggling children.
Among their suggestions are: They are proposing hiring a “chief child mental health officer” to work under the governor on policy and funding decisions regarding youth mental health. They also want the governor to create a Colorado Interagency Commission on Child Mental Health, which would be charged with designing a system that can direct families to resources and quickly connect children to help. And they are calling on the incoming administration to establish a state fund, supported in part by philanthropic donations, digital platform usage fees and social media litigation settlements, to help pay for youth mental health programs and community initiatives across the state.
Here’s what teens want from Colorado’s next governor
Siddharth Dodda has gone beyond statistics – something he encourages politicians to do – and seen firsthand how mental health issues are pushing some of his colleagues to the brink of giving up.
Siddharth, 16, remembers a day spent observing an emergency room pharmacist during an internship at a children’s hospital in Colorado Springs last year. He said he was shocked to learn that admitting six young patients with declining mental health to the emergency room in one day was not unusual.
Some of the students Siddharth met in the emergency room were suffering from suicidal thoughts.
Siddharth explained that mental health struggles take a much different form for other students, and that the state’s youth mental health crisis is widespread.
Like Dharmal, a high school graduate who feels an overwhelming expectation of perfection, Siddharth also grapples with a never-ending to-do list in preparation for his future. I’m studying for a high-stakes exam. I participate in many extracurricular activities. Applying to university.
“We’re all on the verge of falling apart,” said Siddharth, who will be a senior next year at Pine Creek High School in Colorado Springs.
Dharmal and Siddharth, both members of the Colorado Mental Health Youth Council, say that while the stubborn stigma surrounding mental health issues has diminished, many students still feel pressured to persevere in the moments when they feel their weakest.
Unless mental health issues become the norm, Damal said her generation is under “constant pressure to be mentally tough.”
“If we are pushed to the side and told to just be tough and endure, that completely defeats the point of raising young people who can face the future and feel secure about the future,” she said.
Students say they want the governor’s help in spreading awareness about the types of mental health resources that already exist, especially for students living in rural Colorado. This includes “I Matter.” The state program connects students with six free counseling sessions with licensed therapists, but Damal said she didn’t realize it was a mental health program until she learned more through the Mental Health Youth Council.
Schools also need to put more emphasis on mental health, such as health classes that touch on mental health and counselors who not only teach students what they need to do to graduate, but also support them when difficult emotions arise.
At the same time, students say they could use more education on how to manage their smartphones and social media, from controlling the length of their scrolls to dealing with the instinct to compare themselves to classmates on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.
“Young people will eventually become adults, and we need to learn now how to regulate screen time and how to use screens responsibly,” said Ariana Montoya, a rising senior at Village High School in Colorado Springs and a member of the Youth Mental Health Council. “If you send us out into the world as young people without giving us that opportunity, we’re not going to become functional adults because cell phones and technology are never going to go away.”
The most important thing students say the next governor needs to do before any new decisions are made about where the state’s money goes is perhaps the simplest. It’s a louder voice, a voice that will be taken seriously.
“If gubernatorial candidates are serious about solving this problem, they need to get input from young people, and they need to be serious about it, because I often feel that a lot of people are skeptical about young people’s abilities and young people’s knowledge,” Siddharth said. “But when we actually start giving young people opportunities, I think you’ll be surprised by the kinds of conversations we can have and the perspectives we can have.”
Ariana, 16, wonders what the future holds for her generation without more input and urgency from students.
“The young people we have today will one day be the adults in this world running this country,” she said. “So if we don’t take care of them now, what will our world be like in 20, 30 years?”
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