COLUMBIA - A Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee approved a bill Tuesday that would lift restrictions on medications for mentally ill Medicaid recipients.

Under the bill, those patients would not have to get approval for drugs needed to treat mental illness.

Officials at the Health and Human Services Department said they were worried the change would increase costs for its prescription drug programs. Prescriptions for mental illness are the most expensive of all the drugs it covers.

But getting "inappropriate medication may mean intervention by the criminal justice community," said Jeff Moore, director of the S.C. Sheriff's Association. "If you don't take the right medication for a mental ... illness, you may become violent."

Amendments the subcommittee adopted limit the exceptions to schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and major depressive disorders defined by the American Psychiatric Association.