The South Carolina Department of Mental Health primarily serves people who continue to live in their homes with support.
“We treat more than 100,000 patients each year…and 98 percent of the patients we treat are people in the community,” Dr. Robert Banks, the agency’s acting state director, said Monday. He spoke during a talk to the Aiken Rotary Club at Newberry Hall.
Aiken Barnwell Mental Health Center in Aiken and other similar facilities around the state “help patients stay on their medications, get counseling and stay out of hospital emergency rooms,” Banks said. told Rotarians. “That’s our goal, to keep them functioning at home. And all of our centers are doing a great job of making that happen.”
Many of the mental health patients are young people.
“Thirty percent of the patients we treat through our mental health center are children and youth,” Bank said. “We meet many of them at school, so it’s much more convenient for them to receive treatment. We have joined over 600 schools and are aiming to join many more.” Because that’s the best way to meet kids where they are and do the preventive work that we need to do on an ongoing basis.”
The Department of Mental Health continues to operate inpatient hospitals, but the number of admissions has decreased significantly.
“Some may think of the Department of Mental Health as (Columbia’s) old Bull Street campus,” Bank said. “Well, if you’ve been there recently, you know it’s been completely renovated into a commercial area with a baseball field and all that.
“Most of our in-hospital work is done in Columbia and Anderson,” he continued. “We still have about 500 psychiatric beds. This is in contrast to 50 years ago when we had 5,000 psychiatric beds.”
The reason for the reduction is “modern methods” [of treatment] What has been developed, the counseling that we have available, the mental health centers that we have expanded across the state,” Banks said.
