South Carolina State Department of Mental Health – School Mental Health Programs
Since 1993, South Carolina has been developing school mental health (SMH) programs through partnerships with mental health, health and human services, and education organizations. From 1999 to 2013, 10 school districts received Safe Schools/Healthy Students awards, which resulted in more than 450 schools across the state developing SMH programs in urban and rural settings.
Family advocates and school administrators reported multiple benefits from the programming, including better student grades, a drop in behavioral/discipline problems, and fewer out-of-school suspensions/expulsions. State leaders touted the resulting cost savings that stemmed from these benefits including reduced use of high-end services like hospital inpatient facilities, as well as fewer students going into the juvenile justice/law–enforcement system, foster care, and out-of-home placements.
In 2006, the South Carolina legislature recognized the multiple benefits of SMH programs by added a recurring line item in the Department of Mental Health’s budget that provided seed dollars to develop SMH programs in rural communities.
“The State Department of Mental Health is asking lawmakers to increase its budget by $1 million to expand a roughly 20-year-old program that puts mental-health counselors in public schools.” —Jamie Self, Reporter, The State Newspaper