Mark W. Binkley, JD

Interim State Director – The South Carolina Department of Mental Health

The South Carolina Mental Health Commission recently appointed Mark Binkley as the Interim State Director of the Department of Mental Health. Mr. Binkley has been with the Department for over 33 years. Most recently he served as the Deputy Director of the agency’s Division of Administrative Services.

The Department of Mental Health’s mission is to support the recovery of people with mental illnesses, giving priority to adults with serious and persistent mental illness and to children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances. The Agency serves approximately 100,000 citizens with mental illnesses annually, about 30,000 of whom are children and adolescents, and provides outpatient services through a network of seventeen community mental health centers and numerous clinics covering all 46 counties in South Carolina. The Department also operates 3 State Hospitals, including one for substance use treatment, 3 State Veterans’ nursing homes and 1 community nursing home.

A lawyer by training, Mr. Binkley received his undergraduate degree in History and Political Science from the University of Colorado, and earned his law degree from the University of Houston. Mr. Binkley is a member of the South Carolina Bar Association. He was the General Counsel of the Department for over 15 years.

Mr. Binkley is a past Chair of the Legal Division of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD), and has made dozens of professional presentations about legal topics related to mental health treatment, including Civil Commitment, Consent to Treatment, Capacity to Stand Trial, Confidentiality and Involuntary Medication, to name a few.

He and his wife, Laura R. Woliver, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emerita in Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina, are the parents of two adult children and reside in Columbia.