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Hackensack Meridian Health launched a $40 million expansion of the Carrier Clinic that will enable the Belle Mead facility to treat patients as young as 7 years old.

The project, made possible by state funds and private donations, will add 43,000 square feet of space as well as 52 pediatric and adolescent beds. Currently, Carrier is only equipped to treat patients 12 years old and up.

Improving access to mental health services has been a priority for Hackensack Meridian CEO Robert Garrett. In an interview before a groundbreaking ceremony for the project, Garrett told NJBIZ that the new facility is “so sorely needed” in New Jersey.

“Sadly, we’re starting to see children as early as age 7 attempting to commit suicide,” Garrett said by way of example. “I never thought I’d see that in my years in health care.”

In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1-in-5 Americans aged 13 to 18 either currently or at some point during their life have had a seriously debilitating mental illness. And the U.S. Surgeon General found that rates of anxiety and depression rose among children and teenagers before the pandemic. The office attributed the increase to use of digital media, academic pressure and limited access to mental health care.

Needed: ‘Specialized, focused care’

“Pediatric emergency department visits continued soaring well after the height of the pandemic, but what these children really have needed is specialized, focused care in a setting that can promptly diagnose them and provide them with the appropriately skilled team to treat them,” said Dr. Eric Alcera, Carrier Clinic chief medical officer. “We are seeing kids that are younger and more acute. For families who have a child less than 12 years old, the situation becomes more dire due to the limited number of inpatient beds and specialty outpatient services.”

In addition to the 52 additional beds, the expansion project will include a family resource and support center, new treatment models such as multi-sensory rooms, and an academic teaching center and medical staff suite to expand the capacity to teach physicians and other mental health professionals.

Garrett said the facility was designed to make both young patients and their parents feel comfortable. “We make it as homelike as possible,” he said, with indoor and outdoor play spaces. “Parents first have to recognize that there is a problem. And parents, when they do recognize that, we have to make sure that help is available.”

Public-private partnership

The expansion is possible in part by $10 million in state funding and a $10 million donation from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, a charitable endeavor of hedge fund billionaire and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen. State Sen. Andrew Zwicker, D-16th District, and Assembly Member Roy Freiman, D-16th District, championed the funding in the Legislature.

“At a health care conference in March I called for a moonshot for mental health, like the moonshot for cancer treatment several years ago,” Garrett said. The sort of public-private partnership at the heart of the Carrier Clinic expansion can help launch that effort, he added.

The project is one of several undertakings by Hackensack Meridian Health to expand access to mental health services. Garrett noted that Hackensack Meridian runs a program that embeds mental health professionals in private pediatricians’ offices, so that when children go in for annual checkups, they can also be assessed for behavioral health issues. “We’ve screened about 200,000 children, and 10% were referred for services.” And last summer, the system invested $30 million for additional services at its Raritan Bay Medical Center, including electroconvulsive therapy capabilities.