Dear future president,

When you become the president, I hope you try to do more for kids with mental health issues. As you know, we have had way too many mass shootings in America this year. An efficient way to help prevent school shootings is to give help to the kids who need it before they take matters into their own hands and try to solve their own problems with violence. We can also try to control these incidents with heavier gun control, doing things like putting heavier restrictions on who can and can’t own a gun, so that kids don’t have easy access to such powerful weapons.

If we make it so that kids can get affordable, accessible, and reliable therapy or other options to help them talk out their problems, we might be able to help many kids and prevent many future tragedies. If a child does not receive counseling or other forms of help for their issues, they may feel like they have nobody to go to, therefore they bottle it all up inside and go into a downward spiral of further problems. Some kids feel as if the only way to escape from their problems is through violence, whether it be towards them-self through self harm, suicide, or towards others through things ranging from punches to school shootings. “More than 90% of children who die by suicide have a mental health condition” ("Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General") If we can help these children get the help they need and deserve, they might be able to make better choices and use better coping mechanisms to help them get through whatever problems or issues they’re currently facing in their present lives.

You can help this happen by raising taxes and then donating more money to schools so that they are able to open a more reliable and accessible help center for those who so desperately need it and can’t find help anywhere else. It would be wise to donate to schools for this type of thing because it is an easily accessible place for kids, since they normally go to school anyway, they can just stop by a counselor or nurse’s office whenever they feel the need to. I think schools need more funding to be able to do this because at most schools, mental health counselors are typically only at the school for 2-3 days a week, leaving a range of 2-3 days wide open with nobody who is professionally trained to help kids with mental health issues.

So, Mr. or Mrs. President, I hope you decide to take my letter and this issue into consideration, so that you can help people of all ages, but specifically children ages 8-17, all over the United States feel safer in their learning environments and feel better about themselves as well. Also according to NAMI.org’s article “Mental Health By The Numbers,” “approximately 1 out of every 5 kids aged between 13 and 18 experiences a severe mental disorder at some point during their life.” Note the word severe. This doesn’t mean that one out of every five kids gets a little nervous about a big project, or gets a little sad when their significant other breaks up with them. It means that 20% of kids, whose ages range between 13-18, go through severe depression or anxiety, which as I mentioned earlier, if not helped, can lead them into a downward spiral for the rest of their lives. In conclusion, I urge you to at least consider putting just a little more money into funding mental health issue help, because while it may not seem like a very big deal to most people, it will most definitely change some people’s lives for the better.

Sincerely,

Ivy R.