McNabb Center

Mission: Improving the lives of the people we serve; helping children, adults and families with substance use, mental illness and social challenges.

Seventy years ago, a determined Helen Ross McNabb made an appeal to the Knoxville City Council for funds to help open a mental health agency for children. At this time, there was a great need, but little attention given to those suffering with mental illnesses. Due to her persuasive efforts, one of the first community mental health clinics was established in the state of Tennessee. The agency was first created for children but quickly grew to also serve adults in 1955. The clinic opened in a house near the University of Tennessee campus in 1948.

In 1953 the small center took the opportunity to become independent of the City Health Department and became a non-profit corporation under its own board of directors. Adult services were officially added in 1955. Throughout the following decades, the Center provided comprehensive community mental health services. When necessary, the Center would operate neighborhood satellite clinics to provide onsite services to outlying areas. It has always been the history of the Center to find ways to serve those in the community who have no advocates and no means to serve themselves.

The McNabb Center is the region’s leading nonprofit provider of mental health, substance use, social and victim services.

We provide a quality and compassionate approach to care from infancy through adulthood. Since 1948, the Center has proudly served individuals with the most needs and fewest resources. Today, the McNabb Center delivers support to more than 51,000 people throughout East Tennessee each year.