They Fought for Us. Care Should Not Be the Next Battle.

 

My father, Jack McGreevey, served in the United States Marine Corps. Most of his generation came home from the military, went to work, and rarely spoke of what service had asked of them. I began serving veterans at his side, helping the men and women of his generation and those after navigate the benefits their service earned. I serve them today at the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, including each week with veterans who are incarcerated. What those years have taught me is simple: the return home is difficult, the challenges to our veterans are ongoing, and too many veterans manage them alone.

The numbers describe the need. According to SAMHSA, approximately 5.2 million American veterans experienced a behavioral health condition in 2020, more than one in four. Applied to New Jersey’s approximately 258,500 veterans, that rate suggests roughly 70,000 of our neighbors carry such a condition each year, and most are outside any system of care. On a single night in January 2025, 32,495 American veterans were homeless.

But the veterans I sit with are not numbers, and their needs are rarely dramatic at the start. Sometimes it is combat trauma carried quietly for years. Just as often it is something simpler: a strained marriage, trouble at work, sleepless nights, a difficult season, the ordinary weight of a life that has become harder than it should be. Left alone, small struggles grow. Met early, they can be talked through, treated, and resolved. That is why our approach is early care, offered thoughtfully, diligently, and with intention, before a struggle becomes a crisis.

At the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, no veteran is turned away for branch of service, era of service, or discharge status. The work begins where the need begins, and the need usually begins with practical things: recovering the DD-214, the birth certificate, the identification and driver’s license on which everything else depends; restoring benefits; securing housing; resolving fines and old records; and providing job training and employment through the Governor’s Reentry Training and Employment Center. These services are the foundation on which a veteran rebuilds a civilian life, and NJRC provides them today to more than 2,000 New Jersey veterans.

On October 1, we add a clinical pathway for the veteran carrying mental health needs. Through a partnership with the Cohen Veterans Network and the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Easterseals, a partnership that traces to Governor Christie, who first brought NJRC and the network together, every veteran NJRC refers now receives a comprehensive evaluation and twelve individual counseling sessions per episode of care, delivered by licensed mental health professionals using evidence-based treatment for post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety, and for the personal, family, and work challenges of everyday life. There is no cost to the veteran, no waitlist, and no discharge-status barrier. A veteran who reaches out is in counseling within days, and telehealth carries the care statewide.

Where the evaluation shows greater need, psychiatric care, addiction treatment, or hospitalization, the veteran is connected to that level of care through our hospital partners, including Hackensack Meridian Health, RWJBarnabas Health, and Atlantic Health, and through the VA for those eligible. It is an integrated model, driven by clinical best practices: one evaluation, the right level of care, and an NJRC case manager alongside the veteran throughout, addressing the housing, benefits, and employment that treatment requires to succeed.

This work rests on the commitment of many. Governor Mikie Sherrill, herself a Navy veteran, has made the care of New Jersey’s veterans a priority of her administration. Governor Chris Christie’s early support established this work. Senate President Nicholas Scutari and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin have been steadfast champions of New Jersey’s veterans and of this effort in the Legislature. Commissioner Vincent Solomeno and the New Jersey Department of Veterans Affairs have been essential partners, including in securing the VA rating decisions and award letters on which so many veterans’ benefits depend. And the veterans organizations across New Jersey, the posts, chapters, and associations that know their members by name, are so often the first to recognize when a veteran is struggling and the surest bridge to help. We are grateful to each of them.

The purpose is prevention. A veteran seen early can be helped in an outpatient setting. A veteran who waits often arrives later in a crisis state at greater cost to the veteran, the family, and the public. Sometimes it helps to have someone to talk to. As of October 1, in New Jersey, you can find help at every NJRC site, at https://njreentry.org/veterans-mental-health/, [email protected], and at 201.208.2798 for Any NJ Veteran, Every NJ Veteran.

Sharon McGreevey is Director of Veterans Correctional Services at the New Jersey Reentry Corporation.