The South Carolina Mental Health Workforce

Key findings

• South Carolina registers 283.1 active providers per 100,000 residents. That ranks 44 of 51 jurisdictions, below the national 433.5. #
• Charleston County has the state's highest registered density (602.2 per 100k). #
• Counselors are the largest group at 59.2% of South Carolina's registered workforce, compared with 43.9% nationally. #
• 842 providers with a South Carolina practice address first entered the NPI registry in 2025, versus 735 in 2019. These are registry entries, not licenses issued. #
• 60% of South Carolina providers share a registered practice location with six or more in-scope providers. #

Providers per 100,000 by county

Providers are allocated to counties from their practice ZIP code. We withhold the rate for one county (Greenwood), where a single practice address holds at least half the providers registered there, typically a regional employer that enrols its whole clinical staff at one headquarters, which inflates that county and thins its neighbours. The same values appear in the table.

Provider-type mix vs the national picture

Each provider counts once under their primary taxonomy; the US share is printed beside each South Carolina figure for comparison.

When South Carolina's providers entered the registry

This chart shows active providers by the year they entered the NPI registry. Registry entry is not licensure. Clinicians typically register when they start billing, so this measures registrations, not the workforce itself. 2026 is a partial year.

Practice-location size

This shows the share of South Carolinaproviders at single- and multi-provider practice locations, grouped by normalized practice address. It's only a proxy, so see the limitations below.

CE requirements for South Carolina clinicians