New Jersey quietly opened a new front in its ongoing fight against the mental health crisis this week—and it’s one that could change how thousands of residents get help.
State officials gathered at University Hospital’s campus in Newark on Tuesday to mark the opening of New Jersey’s first crisis receiving stabilization center—a facility designed to give people undergoing a mental health or drug-related emergency somewhere to go that isn’t a hospital emergency room.
The center, operated by University Behavioral Health Care on South Orange Avenue, is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is free to access regardless of insurance or ability to pay, according to New Jersey Monitor.
The Missing Piece
The Newark center isn’t a standalone facility—it’s the final piece in a crisis response system the state has been quietly building over the past four years…