CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) – New units designed treat people who in a mental health crisis are set to open in the Lowcountry.
Trident Medical Center has been operating an EmPATH mental health crisis treatment unit for two months while MUSC Health plans to open two units in early 2025 after each received state funding to expand behavioral health care.
EmPATH is an acronym for emergency psychiatric assessment treatment and healing. Since opening in the spring of 2024, Trident Health’s unit has been in demand.
In the summer of 2023, The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is awarded $45.5 million in grants to 13 facilities to build these crisis stabilization centers for patients who need specific evaluations.
“It fills a gap that we really have a need for in our area, which is so folks that need something more than outpatient care, but they don’t need a full hospitalization either,” Live Oak Mental Health Hospital Director of Clinical Operations Melissa Camp says.
Camp says in the past, people in crisis have come to emergency rooms looking for mental health treatment. While that’s a smart step, it’s not the best environment for someone in crisis to recover, and there was nowhere with a specific focus to help those people. Now, when people come into emergency settings, are evaluated and found to be in a mental health crisis, they can be quickly moved to treatment at the EmPATH unit.
“Those individuals end up in emergency departments, and that’s not really treatment. So the EmPATH unit provides an opportunity for behavioral health mental health treatment, but very short term for those folks maybe who just need to restart their medications or need just a little bit of stabilization and then can connect to outpatient care,” Camp says.
She says in the Trident EmPATH unit, there are usually about eight patients on average who stay about one or two days before being connected to long-term care, or with a doctor or pharmacist to get them healthy.
“And that really relieves the burden from you know, in the emergency department. They’re so skilled and they’re well trained to do a lot of different things. But it’s hard for them to specialize too long, you know, in any one area at all. Just like medical patients will go up to different medical units. This is the same kind of thing,” Camp says.
MUSC is planning for EmPATH units to open at MUSC University Hospital, MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s, MUSC Health at Orangeburg Medical Center and Kershaw Medical Center. Those centers are in the renovation and building stage, with plans to open in early 2025.
“So the goal there is creating the right environment that is a therapeutic and healing environment with the right team to be able to address those needs while people are in that crisis. It moves people out of the medical emergency department, which isn’t really well set up for people in a behavioral health crisis, moves them into a better space and where we can really have active treatment to resolve the crisis,” Behavioral Health Services System Administrative Officer Robert Dupont says.
Dupont explains that MUSC will have two units in Charleston. One will be specifically for youth at Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital and the other for adults at MUSC University Hospital. He says these units are just one of the ways current practices are filling gaps that existed in mental healthcare for years.
“If we think about pediatrics, doing more in primary care settings and also in school settings, how do we have as many resources available?” Dupont says.
He understands that even early screenings and treatment can’t prevent people from experiencing crises and needing immediate care.
“No matter what we do, people are still going to have crisis and are going to come in. And this will be a much-improved model of being able to move people quickly into the right kind of care and be able to address those crises there,” Dupont says.
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