About Advantage

Advantage Behavioral Health Systems (ABHS) is the largest provider of mental health, developmental disability and addictive disease services for Barrow, Clarke, Elbert, Greene, Jackson, Madison, Morgan, Oconee, Oglethorpe, and Walton counties.

Advantage accepts all patients regardless of ability to pay, making us the premier agency for the underserved in northeast Georgia.

About our services

Advantage serves nearly 10,000 clients each year. Children & adolescents, age 3 to 18; homeless individuals; single women with children; people with dual diagnosis (mental health and substance abuse disorders); and people with disabilities; are all among our clients.

People do not realize the economic impact of community-based behavioral health services like those provided by Advantage. Major mental disorders alone are estimated to affect 1 in 17 people in the United States and to cost $193 billion in lost earnings.

Every day, Advantage keeps vulnerable people out of mental hospitals, prisons, and the judicial system. By doing this, Advantage provides a major savings to all residents of northeast Georgia.

Yet spending on our services is very low. Advantage is a public not-for-profit agency funded through state Grant-in-Aid and Medicaid contracts -- but this funding now only accounts for about 50% of Advantage's budget. This is where Friends comes in!

For more information, you can visit our website, www.advantagebhs.org!