By Karen Ron-Li Liaw

From the rural communities on the western slope to the eastern plains, to the major urban regions on the Front Range, Colorado families are navigating an all-too-familiar crisis: kids are struggling, and Colorado’s mental health system can’t keep up.

More than one in seven young Coloradans reported poor mental health in 2025. Among high schoolers, 26% reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. Among middle schoolers, the figure is 24%. Suicide remains a leading cause of death for Colorado youth under 18, and our state ranks in the bottom half nationally for youth mental health.

At Children’s Hospital Colorado, we’re seeing this reality every day. In 2025, our experts cared for more than 14,400 pediatric patients in need of mental health treatment within our integrated System of Care — a 6% increase from the previous year. Behind every number is a young person and their family. And they aren’t getting the community support they need outside of the hospital setting.

Fortunately, this past year, we saw a 25% reduction in Colorado’s youth suicide death rate, which is the lowest it’s been since 2007. While we’re seeing this hopeful downward trend, we’re also seeing critical programs and funding at both the state and federal levels drastically cut. This is not the year to lose momentum.

This year, Colorado voters will elect a new governor, and the good news is a new governor won’t have to start from scratch. Children’s Hospital Colorado and Healthier Colorado, along with nearly 70 health care providers, educators, advocates and community organizations, launched Mind Our Future Colorado, a nonpartisan statewide initiative to elevate child and youth mental health in the 2026 gubernatorial election. Together, we’ve built a playbook with real solutions achievable within a governor’s term.

The playbook outlines five core recommendations for Colorado’s next governor. These include appointing a Chief Children’s Mental Health Officer and producing a Children’s Report Card for Colorado that measures child and youth wellbeing over time to improve accountability and multi-agency coordination.

Additionally, the recommendations focus on access to critical mental health care. The playbook asks the next governor to develop a community step-down bridge program to transition youth with complex mental health needs from hospitals to short-term community care settings while lasting solutions are secured. Too many kids are stuck waiting in emergency departments for care in the community.

Mind Our Future Colorado calls on the next governor to regulate social media companies that target young people, set baseline expectations for limiting cell phones during the school day and ensure the technology platforms causing harm are also funding the solutions that can better support youth wellbeing.

The final core recommendation is to create a Thriving Youth Trust Fund that guarantees upstream investment in youth mental health. This means preventing mental health concerns earlier on, which could look like funding more “third” places for kids to spend time with trusted adults and peers or establishing mentorship programs. It’s vital we prioritize prevention and early intervention to make the system work sustainably in the ways that support Colorado kids.

This is not a partisan issue. Ninety percent of Colorado voters across party lines agree our state faces a youth mental health crisis. Whoever wins the governor’s race this November will inherit a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a system that actually works. We need a governor who will make youth mental health a defining commitment from day one, and we need bipartisan lawmakers to continue to champion these initiatives with us.

Supporting youth mental health is minding our future. If this is an issue you care about, whether you’ve navigated this with your own kids or in your community, your voice is critical in this election. 

Join me in speaking up for Colorado’s kids by casting your vote in the governor’s primary on Tuesday, June 30. Our next governor needs to hear us loud and clear: youth mental health still matters.

Dr. Karen Ron-Li Liaw is the mental health in-chief at Children’s Hospital Colorado.