For 40 years, Richard Hills and his staff at Springbrook Behavioral Health have made it their mission to advance the cause of mental health and autism treatment not just in the community but in the entire country.
Springbrook, 1 Havenwood Lane Suite B, Travelers Rest, offers two primary services: child and adolescent residential and acute autism services and adult acute inpatient psychiatric services. It’s a 72,000-square-foot facility sitting on 15.3 acres of property.
It’s through Hills’ efforts that Springbrook has led the way for mental health treatment since he opened the facility in 1982.
But the journey that Hills made started long before Springbrook opened its doors.
Starting in ‘dark ages’
Back in 1968, Hills, a Vietnam veteran, was just coming home from his service in in the Air Force, and he found the job opportunities lacking. But he wound up in a part-time job at a state hospital in Bangor, Maine, where he was going to college. That’s when he originally became interested in health care. His first wife, Mary, was also working on a unit in behavioral management.
At the time, treatment facilities had only a couple of psychotropic drugs available, and facilities were more interested in warehousing patients, Hills said. There were patients in the hospital in the late 1960s who had been there since the 1920s.
“We were coming out of the dark ages,” he said.
His family’s life took a tragic turn when Hills’ wife was sexually assaulted and beaten, and he didn’t know if she would live. The incident left her with permanent psychological damage that continued to deteriorate. At the same time, Hills decided they should move to South Carolina — somewhere with a “friendlier atmosphere.”
As his wife’s condition spiraled downward, he became frustrated at the lack of care that was available. Hills decided the best course of action was to open a hospital himself.
Opening his own facility
He had the help of organizations like the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, CHAMPUS/Tricare and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, along with a number of people in Columbia, but he still found a number of laws stood in the way. From about 1975 to 1982, Hills had to work with government officials to change the rules for hospitals.
“When we started, we knew very little about mental health,” Hills said. “Over 90% of what we know about mental health we’ve learned since opening the hospital.”
He was able to secure about $2 million in funding through a hospital revenue bond, and he found a building, the former Athens Elementary School in Travelers Rest, that would work for their purposes — with a renovation and addition.
The hospital added another 10,000 square feet to the building and opened in 1982 with 44 beds.
Through the National Alliance on Mental Illness, with whom he was co-chair of the veterans’ committee, and veteran service organizations, Hills was involved in developing more stakeholder involvement in Veterans Affairs, which had a trove of research on trauma. Hills wanted to bridge the organization’s expertise across to the private sector.
“The private sector really doesn’t know about trauma, but the VA does,” he said.
The VA is still involved in several areas of mental health and research and is working toward expanding this knowledge — especially in the area of trauma — to the private sector, Hills said.
Increasing involvement with autism
Over the past 10 years, Springbrook has become more involved with autism. About one in 44 children will be diagnosed somewhere on the spectrum — up from 1 in 150 children in 2000, according to Hills.
Springbrook put together an assessment team made up of a number of specialists to work with autism patients. Meanwhile, Hills has turned over the day-to-day operations to current CEO and administrator Mike Rowley, who said he has a special place in his heart for autism. Through his career, he has been a part of a number of startups that addressed autism and mental health, and he’s been a significant part in Springbrook’s financial success and increased market share.
In 2015, the facility officially changed from a traditional child and adolescent psychiatric residential treatment facility to a nationally recognized residential and acute autism and full-service adult acute facility.
“Your motivation can’t be all dollars and cents,” Rowley said.
While some facilities may only be interested in providing the most basic care, Rowley said Springbrook looks beyond the ledgers in providing the best specialized care for its patients.
“If you’re doing what’s most profitable, you’re not going to do what’s best for a patient,” he said.
Springbrook timeline
- 1982: Springbrook opened as a 44-bed adult psychiatric hospital.
- 1986-1987: Addition is built to house another 44-bed residential treatment facility to treat children ages 13 to 18. It had a living area with semiprivate rooms, school rooms, a pool and a gym.
- 2013: Added beds for substance-abuse patients, and Springbrook received a license for seven more.
- 2015: Changes from traditional child and adolescent psychiatric residential treatment facility to a nationally recognized residential and acute autism and full-service adult acute facility.
