James Donaldson on Mental Health - Our children are telling us something. Are we listening?

By Marcus Schmit / Minnesota Reformer Brainerd lost two of its children this summer.

Both were students at Forestview Middle School.

Across Minnesota — in small towns and lake communities, on farms and in cities — families are facing the same unbearable loss.

As Minnesotans, and as people who work every day on mental health, we owe it to Ava, to Alexis, and to every family living with this kind of grief to say plainly what is happening and what we must do about it.

Minnesota is losing young people to suicide, according to deeply concerning recent data.

Preliminary data from the Minnesota Department of Health shows that in 2025, Minnesota’s statewide suicide rate increased by 4% — more than 800 deaths in a single year.

Rates are higher in rural counties than in the metro.

And while suicide rates for older teens and young adults appear to have stabilized or declined, rates among children ages 10 to 14 are moving in the wrong direction.

This is happening in communities across our state — places where neighbors know each other by name, where kids ride the same buses, where grief travels fast and lingers long.

And yet the resources needed to respond — school counselors, community mental health providers, crisis services, prevention programs — are not equally available to every Minnesota family.