You know that thing where you’re watching your community slowly dismantle the very services that could save lives, and everyone’s acting like it’s just another budget meeting? Where suicide clusters keep happening, and instead of pouring resources into prevention, we’re actually considering cutting mental health programs?
Here’s what’s actually happening: We’ve created a society that breaks people and then acts surprised when they break.
I’ve been doing this work for twenty years, and I see this pattern everywhere. A community experiences tragedy—another young person lost to suicide—and for a brief moment, everyone cares deeply about mental health. The vigils happen. The promises get made. The “we need to do better” speeches echo through school auditoriums.
Then the budget meetings come.
And suddenly, mental health services are “non-essential.” The same programs that could have prevented the tragedy become line items to cut. The same counselors who hold space for kids in crisis become expendable overhead.
Let’s be honest about this:
We don’t actually have a mental health crisis. We have a priorities crisis wearing a mental health costume.
Most people don’t realize that when a high school senior like Nico Fischer speaks up about mental health services being cut during another suicide cluster, they’re not being dramatic. They’re seeing clearly what adults have trained themselves not to see—that we systematically underfund the very things we claim to value most.
Here’s what I’ve noticed after two decades of sitting with families after loss: The services that get cut are never the ones that look impressive on paper. We keep the programs with metrics and measurable outcomes. We keep the initiatives that photograph well for newsletters.
What we cut? The drop-in centers where kids can just exist without explaining themselves. The counselors who have time to really listen instead of rushing through 15-minute sessions. The peer support groups that don’t require a diagnosis to join.
You want to know what’s particularly maddening about this pattern? It’s not about money. It never is.
I see this weekly in my practice—families who spent thousands on tutoring and test prep suddenly claim they can’t afford therapy for their struggling teen. Schools that fund million-dollar athletic facilities while letting their counseling departments operate with decades-old resources. Communities that will raise funds overnight for a new playground but let mental health programs die slow deaths from “budget constraints.”
This isn’t about lack of resources. It’s about what we’re willing to see.
The truth is: We’re more comfortable with visible achievement than invisible healing. We’d rather invest in things that make us look good than things that make us actually good.
And our kids? They see right through it.
When another suicide cluster hits—because let’s be clear, in communities that cut mental health services, it’s when, not if—we’ll act shocked. We’ll hold more vigils. Make more speeches. Promise to “do better.”
But right now, while a teenager is trying to get our attention about services being cut, we’re looking the other way.
Here’s what twenty years of crisis work has taught me: The communities that prevent suicide clusters aren’t the ones with the best crisis response plans. They’re the ones that fund boring, unglamorous, everyday mental health support. They’re the ones where kids like Nico don’t have to fight to keep basic services alive.
What if I told you that every time we cut mental health funding, we’re not saving money—we’re just deciding to pay later, with interest, in crisis interventions, emergency hospitalizations, and lives lost?
Your discomfort with this topic isn’t random. It’s brilliant. It’s your wisdom trying to tell you something’s deeply wrong with how we’re approaching this. That instinct to look away from the budget cuts while mourning the losses? That’s not apathy. That’s the cognitive dissonance of living in a system that claims to care while actively demonstrating it doesn’t.
Most people don’t realize that prevention looks boring. It looks like counselors with reasonable caseloads. It looks like drop-in centers staying open during dinner hours. It looks like peer support groups meeting in cafeterias. It looks like therapists who take insurance and have availability within days, not months.
It doesn’t look like emergency response teams and crisis hotlines—though we need those too. It looks like Tuesday afternoon appointments that keep kids from ever needing the crisis line.
I meet parents every week who tell me they didn’t see the signs. But here’s the thing: The biggest sign isn’t in our kids’ behavior. It’s in our communities’ budgets.
When we systematically defund the places where young people can process their pain before it becomes unbearable, we’re not preventing suicide. We’re scheduling it.
So when a high school senior stands up during another suicide cluster and says, “Hey, they’re cutting our mental health services,” that’s not teenage dramatics. That’s clarity. That’s someone young enough to still see clearly, naming exactly what’s happening while the rest of us have learned to look away.
The pattern is right there in front of us. We create impossible pressures. We eliminate support systems. We act shocked when people can’t cope. We mourn the losses. We promise change. We cut more services. Repeat.
You know what changes this pattern? Not more awareness campaigns. Not more crisis protocols. Not more vigils.
What changes it is people like you reading this and suddenly being unable to unsee what’s been in front of you all along. The next time mental health services come up for budget cuts, you’ll remember this moment. You’ll remember that prevention is boring and unglamorous and absolutely essential. You’ll remember that a teenager tried to tell us something important while we were too busy managing our grief from preventable losses.
The truth is: Every community has a choice between investing in mental health support today or hosting funerals tomorrow. We keep choosing funerals.
But here’s the thing about clarity—once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once enough of us see it clearly, we stop accepting “budget constraints” as an excuse for preventable deaths.
The kids already see it. The question is: When will we?
