Credit: (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

At the beginning of the 2023 school year, New Jersey launched a program to increase mental health services for students.

The plan created 15 hubs, or treatment service centers, throughout the state, in an effort to provide preventive and “brief intervention” mental health services to more public-school students.

That program, known as the New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services network, or NJ4S, was a response to the “sharp increase” in the rates of depression, anxiety and stress among New Jersey teenagers and young adults that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The state budget recently signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy dedicates $43 million to the program, which keeps funding flat for the program.

So far, nearly three years into the state’s plan, the program has been responsive and effective in helping to address the mental health needs of children, according to school employees who spoke with NJ Spotlight News.

“What I like is the relationship that develops between the student and the counselor that keeps them coming [back],” Andrew Becker, a district supervisor and social worker in the North Bergen School District, said of the mental health services available to students through the state’s plan. “That’s really important.”

State data through mid-March shows that over 521,000 people have attended or received services through workshops and assemblies addressing substance use, conflict resolution and lifestyle changes to improve mental health, among other offerings. These services, known as Tier 1 services, are available for all students in the state, their parents and school faculty.

No intensive mental health care

However, some students need more care options, especially those seeking more intensive mental health support, said other school officials. But that intensive mental health care is not a focus of the NJ4S program.

To fill that need, some school districts are hiring their own mental health clinicians to provide intensive services, which superintendents say are desperately needed.

“The overall response that we’ve experienced from the schools is that it’s pretty hard to access NJ4S. There’s so many students that have need and some of the areas, there’s just not that many clinicians to provide the services,” said Teresa Ely, regional vice president at Effective School Solutions, which provides mental health support to about 50 New Jersey school districts outside of NJ4S.

Children and adolescents have faced significant mental health concerns in recent years that were made worse by the pandemic. In 2023, 40% of high school students in the U.S. felt so sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks in a row that they stopped doing their usual activities, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year in New Jersey, 54 people between the ages of 15 and 24 died by suicide, according to provisional Health Department data. In 2023, 79 people in the same age range died by suicide.

Even younger New Jersey residents have been impacted. In 2023, five children between the ages of 10 and 14 died by suicide, according to provisional state data. Last year, 11 children in the same age range also died by suicide.

How NJ4S works

Under the NJ4S model, each hub includes a director, mental health crisis prevention consultants, and mental health counselors who deliver services to schools, libraries, community centers, social service agencies and faith-based organizations. Community organizations have been hired to run each hub, which also has a local advisory board that includes students, parents, school representatives and faith leaders.

The aim of NJ4S is to serve as a prevention program, not to address severe mental health concerns or crisis situations, according to a website that introduces and explains the network. Additionally, the program is designed to avoid duplicating services and to efficiently use the limited pool of mental health experts available in New Jersey, according to an April 2023 news release from the state.

“It’s not meant to replace the innovations you already have,” Department of Children and Families Commissioner Christine Norbut Beyer told a group of principals at a spring conference. “It’s not meant to replace the clinician that maybe is in your office or your substance abuse counselor. It is an enhancement.”

The hubs provide three tiers of services. Services in the first tier are available for all students in the state, their parents and school faculty. These include workshops on substance use, conflict resolution and lifestyle changes to improve mental health, among other offerings.

The second tier is for students who need services for issues including substance-use prevention, suicide prevention and pregnancy prevention. These services are offered to smaller groups of students. The top level, or Tier 3, involves individual services provided to students identified by school officials as needing brief clinical intervention. That would include a “psychosocial assessment” of the student to determine if a referral is needed to a psychiatrist, outpatient treatment, longer-term care or counseling within the school itself.

Additionally, the services in tiers 2 and 3 are provided to middle and high school students. An application must be submitted by a staff member designated as the NJ4S representative to be considered for these services, according to the state.

By the numbers

In the 2023-2024 school year, when the state program first started, 239,640 people received Tier 1 services, according to Jason Butkowski, a spokesperson for the state Department of Children and Families. In the 2024-2025 school year, that number grew to 281,972 as of mid-March.

And the number of people receiving Tier 2 and Tier 3 services also increased from the 2023-2024 school year to the most recent school year.

The total number of students receiving services increased about 18% from the first to second year of the program, Norbut Beyer said at the spring conference. She encouraged principals to sign up for NJ4S if they hadn’t already and reach out to the state with any concerns.

This state program has been an “incredible help” for the school and some students who receive therapy sessions through the state program do not want them to end, Evelyn Collazo of the Anna L. Klein School in Guttenberg told NJ Spotlight News.

Tier 3 services are intended to be a brief intervention with a licensed mental health clinician to allow struggling students to focus on academics and be referred to long-term community mental health resources.

“A lot of the kids don’t know how to cope with the stress and the anxiety of life,” said Collazo, a student assistance coordinator at the school. “It’s been difficult, but I can see it getting a little bit better. But I definitely know that there’s a need for mental health for the students,” she said.

The Anna L. Klein School enrolls approximately 1,000 students from pre-kindergarten to the eighth grade, according to the school’s website. Partners in Prevention, a Secaucus-based nonprofit, is the hub that provides mental health support and services to the school, according to Collazo.

Alternative services

The prevention and brief intervention services offered in the state’s plan — the higher levels of support — are not available to middle schools and high schools that already have school-based youth services programs. The latter programs have been in place since the late 1980s and were in 86 schools as of July 2024. School-based youth services programs provide mental health and career development services, among other offerings, in the school buildings themselves.

The state’s original plan was to end those school-based youth services programs by June 30, 2023, and transition to the NJ4S model. After pushback from school officials, lawmakers and advocates of the school-based youth services programs, the state announced in May 2023 that it would no longer attempt to cut these programs.

“NJ4S is not hiring a clinician for every school,” Norbut Beyer said at the spring conference. “We would love to. We don’t have enough clinicians in the state. We don’t have enough money to do that.”

Some school districts have hired clinicians on their own to make sure student needs are met.

West Windsor-Plainsboro School District partners with Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care to offer more targeted mental health support to students than is offered by NJ4S. The district has three on-site clinicians to provide counseling services and help students and families access care and navigate the health care system, Superintendent Dave Aderhold said.

Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care has partnerships with about three dozen districts to provide mental health services. It also serves as the Middlesex County Hub for NJ4S.

“The relationship between UBHC, district counselors and administrators is pivotal to creating a system of care for our students,” Aderhold said.

Crisis support is an issue

NJ4S does little to meet students’ needs for crisis support, which is where districts need help, Aderhold said at a meeting of school superintendents in January. His district pays about $600,000 each year for support from Rutgers, which is on par with spending in other districts. Superintendents from Freehold Regional High School District and Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District said they pay about half a million dollars each year for more intensive support from Effective School Solutions.

Effective School Solutions focuses on providing Tier 3 support to students with emotional and behavioral needs, including individual, group and family therapy. Half of its programs serve high school students.

Some districts used federal pandemic relief dollars to bring in Effective School Solutions to address rising mental health needs. Now that the money is gone, almost all the districts found a way to keep providing the services through local or grant funding, said Ely, of Effective School Solutions.

Young people are six times more likely to complete mental health treatment in schools than in community settings, Ely said, citing research included in a U.S. Department of Education report.

“Our work is so important because we’ve seen it can be more successful if we are providing it at the place where they spend the majority of their time. They’re able to access really great clinical care within the school setting at no cost,” said Ely.

“The need is so great and so many more students are in need of mental health services.”

This story is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.