$30 million gift from Marlene Brandt for youth mental health facility
“Today, we offer new hope for suffering adolescents and young adults,” said Marlene Brandt, a 1980 Rutgers University graduate, during last month’s ribbon cutting for The Brandt Behavioral Health Treatment Center and Retreat, located on Rutgers’ Cook campus in New Brunswick. “We are opening a treatment center that is the first-of-its-kind in the United States.”
Brandt, who went on to a successful career in information technology, donated $30 million for the project — the Garden State’s first youth mental health facility backed by a university or college.
To Brandt, the gift is about paying it forward after her own family’s experience. “For me, this endeavor is deeply personal,” said Brandt. “It is the answer to a quest that started for us nearly a decade ago. It was the pursuit that took my family through a tangled web of medical stumbling blocks. It was a search that was sparked by my daughter’s devastating tumble into an emotional abyss.”
During the opening ceremony, Brandt shared the story of her daughter, Casey, a high-achieving student and athlete – who Brandt described as a beautiful and beloved family member and friend with a “radiant smile” and “truly effervescent presence.”
After leading her college volleyball team to a team championship and winning the tournament’s most valuable player award, Casey burst into tears. “Soon the tears dissolved into an unending waterfall,” said Brandt. “They did not stop.”
Brandt said that days turned into weeks – weeks into months – as Casey suffered from “unrelenting sorrow” that resulted in her being pulled out of school. “I began a long and harrowed search for answers,” said Brandt.
The family tried several different programs and treatment centers with no success, before finally finding a place that yielded positive results. “We found a facility that is 250 miles away from our home,” said Brandt, recounting how Casey received treatment and accepted her place in the facility and steadily got better. “She became an even better version of her previous self.”
The experience affected Brandt and her family greatly. “I am a mother who realizes that overwhelming gratitude is just not enough,” she continued. “I realize that I had the ability and determination to bestow this same gift on many other families who are confronting similar arduous struggles.”
The facility fills a critical need with mental health among young adults on the rise – a fact that was only exacerbated by the pandemic. And it marks continued momentum on the youth mental health front here in New Jersey, which includes Hackensack Meridian Health’s groundbreaking on a $40 million expansion of the Carrier Clinic to improve access to mental health services for young patients.
“Today marks a wonderful milestone in creating not only an important piece of healing and recovery –but also an equally vital university initiative,” said Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway.
The new facility comprises two buildings, known as the Blau Wellness Center and the retreat, which includes rooms for art and music therapy, a mind body studio for dance and yoga therapies. The Blau Wellness Center (named for Allen Blau, a 1963 Rutgers graduate who announced a gift in April to support the Rutgers Youth Behavioral Health Initiative and establish graduate student fellowships) is expected to open later this year – with the retreat to follow.
Soothing colors and designs with a variety of amenities make for a warm, inviting atmosphere. The retreat, which includes private rooms for up to 16 guests, also has a fitness center. Leaders plan to offer equine and horticulture therapy.
The center is expected to serve 1,200 youth and young adults annually, with different treatment and outpatient options aimed at providing individualized solutions for patients.
Other funding includes state and federal contributions of $2 million each and donations from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, and Rutgers alumni Gary and Barbara Rodkin.
The Brandt Center aims to be a model of excellence in health care and scholarly research – strengthening the partnership between Rutgers’ health care professionals and the communities they serve, while helping to train the next generation of behavioral health care providers.
Holloway said the Brandt Center is at the core of what Rutgers University stands for – pointing to academic excellence, building community and the common good.
“The Brandt Center will provide countless training opportunities for graduate students and future clinicians,” said Holloway. “It will build, enlarge, and strengthen our wonderful Rutgers community – and fundamentally, it will amplify our relentless drive on behalf of the common good – to serve society’s most profound needs and the needs of the most vulnerable among us. And the needs, let’s face it, of those who are often most invisible. That’s the work that the Brandt Center is doing.”
“The Brandt Center represents not only a remarkable step forward for Rutgers and RWJB’s commitment to the recovery, health, and happiness of young people across New Jersey – and beyond,” said Frank Ghinassi, president and CEO, Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care. “But it’s also clear evidence that we can build best-in-class facilities and continue to deliver clinical programming that addresses both mind and body.”
Toward that end, Ghinassi said that the Brandt Center will include evidence-based psychotherapy, the newest and most effective medications, skill-based learning that addresses the optimal management of painful emotions/stressful thoughts, healthy nutrition, a peaceful and restorative surrounding, and more.
“This new facility allows the clinical teams to provide much of these curative factors in both an overnight retreat setting – and in an outpatient setting,” he explained. “This helps us to do something that’s critical – and that’s to provide the right care in the right setting at the right time.”
Rutgers New Brunswick Chancellor Francine Conway: “This is a landmark day in New Jersey for young people who desperately need the care the Brandt Center will provide,” said Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor Francine Conway. “The broad spectrum of the university’s clinical and research capacity and the comprehensive range of services will enable a continuum of care – the full arc of treatment – that few other centers in the world can offer.”
RWJBarnabas Health President and CEO Mark Manigan said that the health system is proud of its partnership with Rutgers and Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care – and that the Brandt Center will expand on those efforts. “What distinguishes our partnership and what we are most proud of is our deep commitment to the most vulnerable among us,” said Manigan. “The Brandt Center will become the gold standard for provision of evidence-based compassionate, mental health care – and support for young people.”
New Jersey Department of Human Services Commissioner Sarah Adelman said that the Brandt Center is an opportunity for New Jersey’s families to receive world-class care, including outpatient support. She said the need for such care is substantial, especially for young people. Adelman noted the volume of help being sought through the state’s 988 suicide and crisis hotline that her department oversees.
Human Services Commissioner Sarah Adelman: “Since November of 2022, the hotline has received nearly 3,500 calls, chats and texts – from individuals under the age of 18 – reaching out in moments of darkness,” said Adelman. “New Jersey’s emergency departments are seeing an increased number of kids arriving in the midst of a mental health crisis – and hospitals are struggling to find the right space to provide the right treatment.”
Adelman pointed to the mental health effects in the aftermath of the pandemic, which New Jersey is not alone in facing.
“Places like the Brandt Center create more opportunities to intervene early and meaningfully – and stop youth mental health issues from becoming adult mental health issues,” said Adelman. “With the ongoing shortage of providers in both pediatric and adult care, I am encouraged by the Center’s focus on educating and training the next generation of behavioral health professionals.”
Brandt Center Director Micah Hillis led NJBIZ on a tour of the facility. He said it takes an overall holistic approach to wellness. Hills also stressed Brandt’s vision of individualized care versus a set program. “And that’s the beauty of this – is that we’re really individualizing care,” he told NJBIZ. “Our goal is that it is based on the needs of the individual person. And each person will be worked with individually and their treatment team will decide what’s best – if it’s three weeks, four weeks, five weeks.”
Hillis echoed the critical need for facilities and initiatives like this. “There are adolescents and young adults waiting for outpatient appointments – and this will answer that call,” said Hillis. “As we inaugurate this facility, we are hopeful that it will touch and transform countless lives,” said Brandt. “We are hopeful that our Center will be a model and a springboard for other such facilities throughout the United States.”