Featured in The Record, My Central Jersey, Asbury Park Press, and The Daily Record
New Jersey has made real and meaningful progress in building a modern behavioral health crisis response system. The launch of the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, the expansion of mobile crisis outreach response teams, and the development of crisis receiving and stabilization centers reflect a genuine commitment to ensuring that individuals in crisis have somewhere to turn beyond an emergency room.
That progress currently stands at a critical inflection point.
The national 988 framework is built on three pillars: someone to call, someone to respond and somewhere safe to go. New Jersey has invested meaningfully in the first two. The third — the crisis receiving and stabilization centers that complete the continuum — remains underfunded and, in too many cases, unopened.
How NJ’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline works
New Jersey’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline has experienced sustained growth since its launch in July 2022, with utilization continuing to rise into 2024. According to a 2025 New Jersey Department of Human Services press release, “last year (2024), New Jersey’s 988 contact centers answered nearly 69,000 calls,” and “more than144,000 calls have been answered in New Jersey since July 2022, when the 988 lifeline launched.” In broader statewide 988 performance research covering 2024,New Jersey is included among states with steadily increasing crisis contacts as 988 usage expanded nationwide, with more than 8 million contacts across the United States in 2024 alone, reflecting continued growth in demand for crisis services.
As one of New Jersey’s first certified community behavioral health clinics, Care Plus NJ operates 24/7 crisis services across northern New Jersey. We know what happens when someone in crisis has nowhere to turn but an emergency room: longer waits,higher costs, and outcomes that too often fall short of what the right care, in the right setting, could have achieved.
Crisis receiving and stabilization centers are staffed around the clock and designed as no-wrong-door facilities. They accept walk-ins, law enforcement referrals, and mobile crisis hand offs. They de-escalate, stabilize and connect individuals to ongoing community-based care, reducing unnecessary emergency room visits,hospitalizations and law enforcement involvement in the process. They are not an optional enhancement to the system, they are the missing piece that allows the entire model to function as intended.
Bergen County is home to one of these centers, and Care Plus NJ is preparing to open its facility next month. We are ready. The clinical teams are in place. The need is well documented. What remains unresolved is whether the state will provide the sustained funding required to keep these doors open and to open the others on schedule.
We recognize that New Jersey is actively advancing this work through proposed legislation, including efforts to establish sustainable funding in the future, as well as ongoing development of a State Plan Amendment process and billing codes and financing structures. These efforts are important and reflect thoughtful system design. However, they remain under review and in active discussion. Meanwhile, the need for immediate capacity continues to grow.
NJ must invest in crisis receiving and stabilization centers
To ensure the stability and effectiveness of New Jersey’s 988 crisis response system and its full continuum of care, Care Plus NJ is calling for an immediate FY2027investment of an additional $33 million to support the implementation of five statewide crisis receiving and stabilization centers. This funding is necessary to establish the infrastructure, workforce and service capacity required to meet the growing behavioral health and substance use needs of communities across New Jersey. It is also the investment that ensures 988 achieves parity with the emergency response role of the 911 system, by completing the full crisis continuum.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill has identified youth behavioral health as a budget priority, and that recognition matters. The infrastructure to deliver on that commitment is being built right now, in Bergen County and across the state. New Jersey invested in the right model. The question before the Legislature is whether it will provide the resources to make it work.
Care Plus NJ recently hosted state legislators for a hard hat tour of its Bergen County facility, providing lawmakers an opportunity to see firsthand what this investment has produced, meet the clinical teams ready to serve and understand what is at stake if these centers remain closed while the people they were designed to help keep waiting.
New Jersey has done the hard work of building a crisis response system. Completing it is a fulfillment of a commitment already made, to every individual and family across this state who may one day need somewhere safe to turn.
My Central Jersey: https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/opinion/2026/05/20/nj-mental-health-crisis-care-system-funding/90065854007/
The Asbury Park Press: https://www.dailyrecord.com/story/opinion/2026/05/20/nj-mental-health-crisis-care-system-funding/90065854007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z11xx01e002000v11xx01d–xx–b–xx–&gca-ft=22&gca-ds=sophi
The Daily Record (Parsippany): https://www.dailyrecord.com/story/opinion/2026/05/20/nj-mental-health-crisis-care-system-funding/90065854007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z11xx01e002000v11xx01d–xx–b–xx–&gca-ft=130&gca-ds=sophi
Brigitte Johnson is president and CEO of Care Plus NJ, one of New Jersey’s first Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics. Care Plus NJ provides integrated behavioral health, substance use and primary care services to individuals and families across northern New Jersey.
