Mental Health

THE PROBLEM: Our congregations, families and communities shared in our House Meetings that they were experiencing deep despair and frustration around a lack of resources or access to resources for mental illness. At our first Community Problems Assembly in 2017, our members voted to prioritize this problem for research and action. We found that a fourth of all people will experience mental illness in their lifetime and over 70% of people don’t receive care for mental illness in the first year. People often end up in the Emergency Room during crisis – a problem that resulted in more than 10,000 ER visits in Lexington and Richland County in 2016 alone, costing more than $38 million dollars. Oftentimes our first responders are ill equipped to deal with situations in which someone is in crisis, and it can result in more suicides, increased injury to citizens and officers and higher costs associated with the ER, hospital and jail. 

Through our Research Process, we learned of how Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) can provide officers with the resources to de-escalate situations and help people suffering from mental health crises. We also learned of the Clubhouse model which provides a space for people to receive mental health resources.

ACTION: Once we understood the problem and identified best practices to address them, MORE Justice took action! At the Nehemiah Action in April of 2018, MORE Justice gained commitments from Police Chief Holbrook and Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott to ensure that every officer is certified in CIT by April of 2021. MORE Justice also gained commitments from Columbia Mayor Benjamin, City Councilmembers Davis and Green and County Councilmembers Malinowski, Jackson and Summers to take the first steps to establish an accredited Clubhouse in the Columbia area. 

As of April 2018, the Columbia Police Department (CPD) had 8 CIT certified officers and the Richland County Sheriff Department (RCSD) had around 50. As of March 2023, CPD has 224 officers and RCSD has 152. These more than 300 additional officers are now safer while more people with mental illness are being diverted away from the jail and towards the resources they need. In June of 2017, Columbia Mayor Benjamin and several city and county council members visited Gateway House in Greenville, SC (the only Clubhouse International Accredited Clubhouse in the state). Since that time, a working group has been created with members of MORE Justice, National Alliance on Mental Illness of SC, Mirci–a Midlands mental illness recovery center, United Way of the Midlands and others. The group is working on next steps to establish a fully accredited Clubhouse in our community.