Rogers discusses S.C. Department of Mental Health's response to COVID-19

Aiken Standard - 12/13/2021

Dec. 13—One of the biggest challenges for the South Carolina Department of Mental Health has been dealing with the effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to its director.

Dr. Kenneth Rogers described the situation as "a nightmare" during a speech to the Rotary Club of Aiken on Monday at Newberry Hall.

He began his tenure as director in April of last year.

"The moral of the story is don't start running a state agency during a pandemic because all your life will consist of is focusing on COVID," Rogers said. "But in all seriousness, COVID has presented some interesting opportunities.

"I frequently share with people that in the past, early in my career, I was reluctant to tell people I was a psychiatrist," he continued. "Being from rural South Carolina, if you tell people, 'Yeah I went to medical school and I became a psychiatrist,' they look at you like, 'Did you get kicked out or what?'"

"But more recently, what I've found is that people think about mental health in a different way than they did 20 or 30 years ago," Rogers concluded. "And I think COVID, in some ways, may have actually moved the needle forward in how we think about, process and look at mental health."

Suicides in both adults and children "continue to rise," Rogers reported, and the pandemic has created additional stressors.

In both adult and school mental health programs, the Department of Mental Health is "really" trying to address suicide rates, Rogers said.

"We continue to look at programs, outreach, et cetera that will help people not get to the point where they're suicidal," he said.

When there is a significant risk for suicide, the department is seeking better ways to "address it very, very quickly," he added.

Rogers also discussed the use of telepsychiatry after COVID-19 arrived in South Carolina and spread.

"One of the things that I'm very proud of is that during the pandemic, rather than missing a beat and having to shut down our services, we were able to immediately switch over to telemedicine services," he said. "During that time ... less than .1% of the folks that we were seeing before the pandemic weren't being seen after the pandemic (began). So, basically, we really lost no one to aftercare and follow-up during that entire time, which says a lot about the dedication of our staff, our infrastructure and the ability to keep up with things as we are moving forward."

For more information about the Department of Mental Health, visit scdmh.net.

For more information about the Rotary Club of Aiken, visit aikenrotary.com.

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