Although Mental Health Awareness Month has passed, the urgency facing families trying to find care for a child in crisis continues every day.
Across the country, young people are struggling with anxiety, depression, trauma, and suicidal thoughts while the systems designed to support them remain overwhelmed and under-resourced. This is not a challenge we can acknowledge one month a year. It is a growing health crisis that demands sustained action, investment, and leadership.
Children and adolescents should not have to wait for care that can change and even save their lives.
At Hackensack Meridian Health, we see the consequences every day. When specialized inpatient behavioral health services are unavailable, families are left facing impossible choices. Too often, children wait days for placement because the number of pediatric behavioral health beds simply does not meet the need.
In behavioral health, especially pediatric behavioral health, capacity matters. Safe spaces matter. Family support matters. And so does the ability to continually evolve care models to meet the changing needs of young people.
This is where philanthropy plays a critical role.
Philanthropy has the power to move at the speed of urgency. It can fund programs, environments, and innovations that traditional reimbursement models often cannot support. It can help expand access, accelerate progress, and ensure care is designed around patients and families rather than the limitations of infrastructure.
We are seeing what philanthropic and public investment can unlock at Carrier Clinic, New Jersey’s largest not-for-profit behavioral health facility and a trusted provider of mental health and substance use disorder care for more than a century.
Carrier has long been a leader in adolescent care, and its newly opened $40 million, 43,000-square-foot child and adolescent mental health expansion represents a major step forward for families across New Jersey. The new facility adds 52 inpatient beds, lowers the minimum age of treatment from 12 to 7, and creates a care environment designed specifically for children and adolescents in crisis.
A critical part of this work is removing barriers to early intervention. We know mental health conditions often emerge during childhood and adolescence, and when families cannot access timely care, those needs become far more complex. Philanthropy helps stop the waiting.
It supports infrastructure that changes what is possible: multi-sensory therapeutic spaces, family education and support centers, and environments intentionally designed with safety and healing in mind. It also helps strengthen the workforce by supporting academic teaching centers and clinician training programs, because access is not only about beds — it is also about having enough trained professionals to meet growing demand.
In response, Hackensack Meridian Health has expanded collaborative programs that support suicide prevention training, psychiatric consultation resources, and behavioral health education for frontline providers.
Carrier Clinic’s expansion is an important step, but it’s not the finish line.
At the Hackensack Meridian Health Foundation, we are building a $1 billion “Be The Difference” campaign because we believe New Jersey deserves a future where behavioral health care is more accessible, more innovative, and treated with the same urgency as physical health.
It is time to invest in care environments that keep children safe, strengthen support for families, and train the next generation of behavioral health professionals.
For children in crisis, mental health can’t wait.
Joyce Hendricks is the chief development officer at Hackensack Meridian Health.
