Rep. Jermaine Johnson, D-Columbia, pictured on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds on Sept. 18, 2024 (File/Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — For years, Rep. Jermaine Johnson was angry.
The trauma of growing up in poverty, losing his brother to gun violence and having a gun pulled on him at 13 weighed on him into adulthood, he said.
“Everything in my life was just fighting and fighting and fighting and being in survival mode and not understanding (why),” the 39-year-old Hopkins Democrat recently told the SC Daily Gazette.
It wasn’t until years later that Johnson started seeing a therapist and began to overcome the lingering anger and anxiety from his childhood.
He hopes a new documentary about his life, titled “I Got Myself a Yard,” will help start a conversation to help overcome the stigma around mental illness, said Johnson, who faces no opposition in November for a third term representing southern Richland County.
Tickets went on sale in advance of World Mental Health Day, which is Thursday.
In 2023, about one-third of adults surveyed in South Carolina reported symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health issues.
About 15 of every 100,000 people in the state died by suicide in 2021, according to the latest federal data available.
Since the 988 crisis lifeline launched nationally in 2022, the number of calls, texts and chats to the hotline in South Carolina have increased, according to the state Department of Mental Health. With growing demand, officials are trying to educate people on the warning signs of suicide while answering more texts and chats in the state’s call centers, said Jessica Barnes, program manager in the agency’s Office of Suicide Prevention.
Talking about mental health
Childhood trauma was at the root of Johnson’s struggles with mental health.
One of his first memories — at about 5 years old — was his brother running away from their home in Los Angeles to Minnesota after a fight with his father. A few months later, Johnson’s brother was shot and killed by the friend he ran away with, Johnson said.
At 13 years old, a police officer pulled a gun on Johnson while he was playing with a toy gun outside a friend’s house. Soon after that, his parents lost their place to live, and they slept in motels, he said.
As a teenager, Johnson was kicked out of school for fighting. He was angry and struggled to cope, he said.
“Having these thoughts run through your head when you feel like there’s no way out, there’s nobody that cares, and there’s nowhere for you to go, you start asking these questions, like what’s the meaning of life? What’s the purpose of anything?” Johnson said.
Johnson poured his feelings into basketball, eventually earning a scholarship to play at the College of Charleston.
He credits the sport, which he played professionally from 2009 through 2015 — with the Reno, Nevada, Bighorns before playing for teams in Canda, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico — with saving his life by giving him an outlet at his lowest moments, he said.
But it didn’t get rid of the trauma he had faced. The anger stuck around into Johnson’s adulthood. So, too, did the anxiety, especially around money. Johnson had anxiety attacks when the number in his bank account dipped too low, he said.
So, Johnson went to therapy. His therapist helped him understand that what happened in his childhood was beyond his control, that his parents were people dealing with their own problems, that what happened was not his fault, he said.
“That’s what led me into the mental health thing and encouraging others to go to counseling,” Johnson said.
Overcoming stigma
Johnson, who owns a consulting firm, encourages almost everyone he knows to seek counseling.
Friends getting married should get premarital counseling, the married father of three tells them.
People going through a tough time should get individual counseling. He even suggests to his Statehouse colleagues to try therapy to cope with the job’s stresses and reluctancy to confide in others, he said.
Talking about therapy and encouraging more people to seek it out can help reduce the stigma around mental health, especially in communities like the one in which he grew up, he said.
“Historically, in the Black community, we just tell our people and our young people to kind of pray it away,” Johnson said. “I say it’s OK to have Jesus and a therapist to deal with some of the trauma that we come up with.”
Decades of national suicide prevention policies haven’t slowed the deaths
The stigma around mental illness and suicide is one of the biggest challenges the state Office of Suicide Prevention faces in trying to get people help, Barnes said.
The state office offers trainings to help people identify signs that someone might be considering suicide and how to get them help. Those trainings, which are both virtual and in-person, are open to anyone who wants to learn, though some people don’t understand why it’s necessary, she said.
“They think, ‘Oh, no, I’m not a mental health care provider, so I don’t think that applies to me,’” Barnes said.
The more people know about identifying warning signs, the more likely they’ll be able to help their friend, family member or neighbor get the help they need, she said. More people talking openly about mental illness will also likely lead to more people seeking help, she said.
That’s Johnson’s goal with his new documentary. He wants to show young people that even if they face difficulties, they can make it through, he said.
“It’s to show that your past does not define your future, that you can come from these traumas. You can come from these situations, and with the right resources, you can be successful,” Johnson said.
The Office of Suicide Prevention
Over the next year, the state Office of Suicide Prevention plans to start increasing the number of chats and text messages being answered at the state’s two 988 call centers in Charleston and Greenville.
Answering calls is the top priority for the two call centers, Barnes said.
After the shorter phone number replaced the lengthier suicide prevention hotline in 2022, the number of calls spiked about 38%, from an average of 7,300 per quarter to more than 10,000, according to the Department of Mental Health.
The number of texts and chats jumped as well, but they make up a relatively small proportion of people reaching out. In the second quarter of 2024, the centers received around 3,000 texts and 2,000 chats, compared with more than 10,000 calls, according to department data.
Call center workers can’t answer both calls and texts at the same time. They can’t answer one without risking being too distracted to respond to the other.
Written communication also requires more specialized training, since the operators can’t hear the person’s tone or any background noises that might give them more information on the situation. And response times on both sides mean written answers typically take longer, Barnes said.
The number of calls to the state’s 988 hotline spiked soon after the number’s launch, with a steady increase since then. (Provided/SC Department of Mental Health and Deep Roots Research)
Texts and chats still get answered, just by a national backup center. As of May, the state’s call centers were answering 77% of calls that came into the state from South Carolina area codes, according to KFF.
For the most part, the help is the same. Local responders are typically more familiar with specific resources in the state, Barnes said. Plus, talking to someone local creates a more friendly feeling, she said.
“You’re like, ‘Oh, you know what I’m talking about,’” Barnes said. “‘You’re here, too, in a way.’”
The call centers will likely train some current workers to answer texts and chats and hire others to keep up with the demand.
For the time being, the call centers have enough funding to do that.
Last year, legislators began designating $4 million annually for the call centers. That recurring allotment, which will continue indefinitely, followed a one-time payment of $1.3 million in 2022.
The state also received more than $8 million in federal grants to kickstart the 988 hotline. Roughly $3 million of that came in the federal fiscal year that just ended, according to a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The state Department of Mental Health expects to continue receiving federal aid through 2026, though future grant amounts are uncertain. Whether the agency ask the Legislature for more money after the federal grant dries up depends on a review of the call volume, Barnes said.
“I think that for right now, we are in a place where we can build and meet that demand as we are hiring people with those funds,” Barnes said. “I think it’s going to have to be something that we constantly look at as demand increases.”