Goldie Hawn is concerned about the state of children's mental health as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In an op-ed for USA Today, the Hollywood icon addressed the numerous issues that have been affecting kids throughout the nearly two-year pandemic.
"Today, we are in the midst of a national trauma that could very well surpass 9/11 and approach the heightened terror of the Cold War years," she began. "The COVID era has changed our children's lives in far more real, tangible ways - social distancing, school closures, daily mask use."
Hawn argued children are "afraid of people, spaces, even the air around them" which she called "a level of constant fear not seen in decades". She compared that fear to the rise in emergency room rates for suspected suicide attempts in the U.S., which have increased by 51 per cent for adolescent girls and four per cent for boys, according to officials at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Oscar winner noted experts "agree that the state of our children's mental health is now at the level of a national emergency".
"This tells us that as a nation, we have failed our children," the 76-year-old continued. "The few federal and state dollars that get directed to youth 'mental health' invariably end up being earmarked for addiction and 'crisis care,' addressing only the most severe disorders. There are modest funds once a kid ends up in a hospital. But what about before?"
Hawn, who founded the non-profit programme MindUp, also insisted leaders are not "properly funding preventative care and early interventions that normalise the mental struggles every individual has at some level".
"We will survive the COVID-19 pandemic, but I'm not sure we can survive an entire generation whose collective trauma sends them hobbling into adulthood," she concluded. "We need more research, more preventative care and more early intervention. And there's still time. If we get it right, today's kids could emerge as the strongest generation America has ever produced."
