COLUMBIA, S.C. - A fully integrated health care system that includes treatment for mental illness could reduce the stigma associated with emotional disorders, Mental Health Department director George Gintoli says.

Gintoli's budget presentation Tuesday was one of many Gov. Mark Sanford has heard in recent weeks as he reviews the spending of all state agencies to prepare for writing his first budget.

Gintoli told Sanford the mentally ill could be better served in the community if they went to the same health care centers as people seeking treatment for other illnesses. One of his goals is to get rid of the negative image of "going to a shrink."

The department serves more than 63,100 adults and 33,300 children at 17 community mental health centers and two inpatient hospitals. It has a budget of $345 million - about half of which come from the state.

Gintoli and Sanford agreed there should be a more streamlined way to provide health care services in South Carolina, but neither had a proposal to consolidate the work of several agencies.

"We have gone to other agencies to ask how we can better work together," Gintoli said, pointing to a list of nine agencies and other groups with whom the department is collaborating.

Among those agencies are the Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services that pairs mental health centers with local drug treatment facilities, and the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, which helps the mentally ill find jobs.

But Sanford said he is seeing many caseworkers from different agencies duplicating services, not knowing what the other agency is doing. "I think it's frequent," the governor said.

Gintoli pointed to several programs that are taxing his agency's resources, including a sexual predator program that has been underfunded. That program is housed at the Corrections Department but Mental Health is responsible for treating the people determined to be sexual predators and needs at least the $750,000 allocated last year to continue doing the job, Gintoli said.

A veterans nursing home will need $5 million in the following fiscal year, but it also probably shouldn't be run by Mental Health, Gintoli said.

Joy Jay of the Mental Health Association in South Carolina said the structure of the Mental Health Department has too many administrative layers as it is, but, she cautioned, reforming the state's health care system has been a hard sell in the state Legislature.

"It's a real commonsense way to do business," Jay said. "But it's going to be a hard thing to do."