Conway Medical Center gets $350K grant for mental health and addiction services

CONWAY, S.C. (WBTW) — Conway Medical Center has received a $350,000 grant from the Duke Endowment that will help make mental health and addiction services more accessible for underserved communities.

The grant will allow the hospital to provide more Horry County residents with mental health and substance abuse counseling. Specifically, it will allow the expansion of the United Way of Horry County’s Breaking Barriers of Mental Health program. CMC will help provide referrals to the program.

“Really, what it will enable us to do is partner with local resources to bring the right resources to bear, for patients in need of mental health- or addiction-type counseling,” said Dr. Paul Richardson, Conway Medical Center’s chief medical officer and vice president of medical education.

Richardson said patients come to CMC’s emergency department for mental health services but that the hospital does not specialize in psychiatric care. As a result, CMS is excited to help patients find licensed mental health and addiction counselors and to better help the patients they are trained to treat.

“It allows us to have more access for the patients with the conditions that we do treat,” Richardson said. “But at the same time, it’s allowing the patients who need those services to get exactly what they need as well.”

Horry County is fifth in suicide attempts and ideation and No. 1 in drug overdoses and drug overdose deaths in South Carolina, according to Blakely Roof, president and CEO of United Way of Horry County.

To combat these statistics, CMC said the Breaking Barriers Program will provide free, outpatient substance use disorder and mental health counseling that is specifically designed for Horry County’s homeless, uninsured, underinsured, low-to-moderate income, and rural populations.

Because of the grant, CMC also said Breaking Barriers will have counselors available more days at certain locations and will increase the number of served clients. The program also plans to find more locations for counselors to meet with their clients.

“We’re always looking for new sites,” Roof said. “We’ve changed sites if they’re not a good location, but the most important thing is we want to meet people where they are. We want to eliminate those barriers so that they can receive the services so that they can live their best lives.”

To measure their patients’ progress and the success of their programs, United Way of Horry County counselors assess their patients’ moods after every session.

Roof said 70% of patients who attend more than one session show improvement during their mental health journey. She also said the United Way of Horry County and the Breaking Barriers program hope the grant will help continue this success and destigmatize seeking mental health care.

“A lot of it also has to do with the stigma of mental health,” Roof said. “What it means to get counseling. It doesn’t mean that you’re weak or there’s anything wrong. It could be me, it could be you, it could be anybody. So having access to those who are able to talk to someone, and work through some things, is really important.”

Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

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Skylar Musick is a multimedia journalist at News13. Skylar is originally from Long Island, New York. She joined the News13 team in June 2024 after graduating from Villanova University in May 2024. Follow Skylar on X, formerly Twitter, Facebook , or Instagram , and read more of her work here .

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