New Jersey puts $16.4M toward new mental health crisis centers

🏥 New Jersey is investing $16.4 million to build crisis receiving and stabilization centers designed to help people in mental health and substance use crises.
📍 Centers are planned for Essex, Bergen, Morris, Monmouth and Camden counties, with Essex expected to open by the end of September.
📞 NJ's 988 hotline handled calls from 143,000 people during state fiscal year 2026, with thousands more using text and chat services.

TRENTON — The New Jersey Department of Human Services has announced $16.4 million to build crisis receiving and stabilization center connected to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline.

The hotline received roughly $28 million of the $60.7 billion budget for the fiscal year that started on July 1, 2026, but, at that time, no money was set aside for the crisis stabilization centers.

Until now.

New Jersey crisis centers aim to ease pressure on hospital ERs

These centers are so important because when people experience a mental health crisis or a substance use disorder, many don’t know where to go for help, so they wind up crowding hospital emergency rooms in the state, said Deputy Commissioner for Health Services Valerie Mielke.

The problem is that while many of them don’t require such level of care or in-patient care, they are still suffering and need help.

“This is a place where people can go 24 hours a day. There will be professionals there so if someone needs medication for their mental illness or medication for an opioid use disorder or alcohol use disorder, there’ll be prescribers there that can prescribe medications,” Mielke said.

There will be people there who have been through similar experiences so they can connect with these people in a very special way, she said.

These professionals can talk about how recovery is possible, that there is life on the other side of the crisis, and provide folks with the hope they desperately need, Mielke explained.

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988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline has expanded services with the announcement of new crisis receiving and stabilization centers in five NJ counties (NJ Dept. of Human Health)

How the new crisis stabilization centers will help

These crisis and stabilization centers will not only help drive down volume at hospital emergency departments, they will also support individuals while they are there, and then will help connect them to resources in the community, Mielke said.

With a person’s permission, the centers will also follow-up after a few days of leaving the center to make sure that things are still okay, and that they’ve been able to make connections with those resources or services.

For individuals waiting to connect to a practitioner to manage their medications in the community, they can return to the center for their medicine in the interim, Mielke said.

“This funding allows us to take another significant step toward strengthening New Jersey’s crisis response system that meets people where they are,” Mielke said.

Five New Jersey counties getting crisis centers

The $16.4 million will help build crisis and stabilization centers in five New Jersey counties: Essex, Bergen, Morris, Monmouth, and Camden, with the Essex site slated to open at the end of September, Mielke said.

Once operational, the centers will complement the existing components of New Jersey’s 988 continuum care, which includes the 988 call, text, and chat services, mobile crisis response, and other community-based behavioral health services.

The nationwide 988 hotline opened in 2022, where anyone who was experiencing a mental health crisis or substance use disorder could call the number 24/7 and, in most instances, the crisis that person is experiencing at the time, can be adequately addressed on that call, Mielke said.

Crisis teams are available in every county in New Jersey. People can gain access to a crisis team member by simply calling 988, she said.

For state fiscal year 2026, from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, there were 143,000 individuals who called the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline in New Jersey, Mielke said.

“In July alone, we answered 9,400 calls here in New Jersey. We had, in terms of chats and text messages that were answered here in New Jersey, was 3,679,” Mielke said.

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