The McNabb Center and the Mental Health Association of East Tennessee (MHAET) are celebrating 75 years this year. Ben Harrington, CEO of MHAET, sat down with McNabb’s Community Relations team to talk about our shared history.
Can you tell me about the connection between McNabb and the Mental Health Association (MHA)?
The founding of the McNabb Center and the MHAET are parallel. Clifford Beers, who is considered the founder of the modern mental health movement, helped establish the national MHA after a stay at a mental institution in 1900. He established a mental health clinic in Connecticut which eventually became the Mental Health Association. MHAET was established as an affiliate of MHA in 1948 by Helen Ross McNabb. Both Helen Ross McNabb and Clifford Beers were moved by their exposure to conditions at mental health hospitals and decided to make a change in their communities.
How have you seen mental health needs change, and what have McNabb/MHAET done to meet those needs?
At first, mental health was focused on incarceration or asylum. Advancements were made to start treating people in hospitals and releasing them back into the community. This led to intervening before people entered the hospital altogether. The goal now is to keep people in their communities. Over the last 29 years at MHAET, our goal is, “how do we deflect people from inpatient care and avoid that high level of cost.”
We’ve got to be so proud that we live today and that we’ve been made to make thoughtful differences and help people every day.
To read more about the Mental Health Association of East Tennessee’s history and their work, visit their website https://www.mhaet.com/about-us/history/. The McNabb Center is proud to partner with Ben and the MHAET to meet the mental health needs of our region.
Ben Harrington, CEO of MHAET
The McNabb Center and the Mental Health Association of East Tennessee (MHAET) are celebrating 75 years this year. Ben Harrington, CEO of MHAET, sat down with McNabb’s Community Relations team to talk about our shared…
Dr. Louise Noel was the McNabb Center’s first psychiatrist when it opened in 1948. Read about Dr. Noel from the Knoxville News Sentinel Editorial (9/25/90):
EAST TENNESSEE lost a pioneer last week
Dr. Louise Noel, who fought on the frontier of mental health care in East Tennessee, died at 75. In 1948, Noel was a co-founder of the Helen Ross McNabb Center for mental health care. She served the center as its executive director and first psychiatrist. In honor of that, the center contains the Louise J. Noel Therapeutic Nursery, which is used to care for abused children.
Born in Manila, the Philippines, where her American parents taught, Noel studied medicine in Colorado and at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. In 1946, she moved to Knoxville with her husband the late Dix W. Noel, who taught law at the University of Tennessee. The couple had six children.
Noel brought her psychiatric specialty to Tennessee at a time when psychiatrists were looked on as witch doctors and female psychiatrists were even more suspect, she once said.
When Noel retired from the center in 1984, she was away from it only a short time before the center requested her to come back part-time. She had worked at the center on that day last March when she had the stroke that ultimately caused her death.
Noel was a finalist for the recent Diamond Award honoring outstanding East Tennessee mental health care professionals. The nomination for the award credited her with helping enough people to fill Neyland Stadium twice over.
Noel once told a News-Sentinel reporter, “The sad fact of human nature is that the more we need love, the less lovable we become.”
Reworking that idea a little bit, we can observe with gratitude: The fortunate fact of human nature is there are always people like Louise Noel who come to the forefront when we most need them, to succor those of us who are least lovable.
Dr. Louise Noel was the McNabb Center’s first psychiatrist when it opened in 1948. Read about Dr. Noel from the Knoxville News Sentinel Editorial (9/25/90): EAST TENNESSEE lost a pioneer last week Dr. Louise Noel,…
In 1968, 20 years after its founding as the Knoxville Mental Health Center, the McNabb Center was renamed for its founder, Helen Ross McNabb. The organization was known as the Helen Ross McNabb Center until 2020.
In 1968, 20 years after its founding as the Knoxville Mental Health Center, the McNabb Center was renamed for its founder, Helen Ross McNabb. The organization was known as the Helen Ross McNabb Center until…
Did you know that the McNabb Center established a crisis center at the 1982 World’s Fair? Read an excerpt from our 1982 Annual Report:
McNabb at the 1982 World’s Fair
Did you know that the McNabb Center established a crisis center at the 1982 World’s Fair? Read an excerpt from our 1982 Annual Report:
How many of you have vivid memories from when you were 4 ½ years old? Can you imagine what it might take to make such an impression that it would stay with you the rest of your life?
As a young child, Helen Ross had an experience that stirred her lifelong interest in mental health. Her childhood family home was on a hill about a half mile from the gate of Eastern State Hospital (This facility closed in 2012 as the Lakeshore Mental Health Institute). Her nanny had a friend who worked in one of the buildings at the hospital, and one day walked down the road to visit, taking young Helen with her. The year was 1914. The young girl found herself in a prison-like building, overcrowded and smelly, with faces inside peering out looking frightened and unkempt.
Throughout her childhood, a couple of other events helped foster her interest in mental illness. When she was eight or nine years old, a patient escaped from Eastern State Hospital in the middle of the night and went to the Ross’ house. The family could hear him cracking nuts with a nutcracker in their breakfast room. Her father called the hospital and the patient was escorted back. When she was a teenager, she and her mother were asked–as neighbors–to judge the Christmas decorations at the hospital. The impressions she took away from that visit were of dim lighting, drab colors, old clothes, shabby furniture, tiny rooms, boredom, and noticeable quiet. She appreciated the attendants, who worked 12 hours per day for a small amount of money, yet were caring enough to take great pains to decorate Christmas trees for the patients.
Helen later attended Wellesley College and received her undergraduate degree from The University of Tennessee in psychology and sociology in 1936. Shortly after graduation, she married Richard McNabb, a co-worker at Associated Charities. By 1941, they had three children and she had earned a master’s degree in psychology. While her husband was off to the war, she returned to UT as an instructor and began doing a little social work for the Home Service Department.
With the memories of her youth still vivid and reinforced daily through her social work and the experiences of GI’s returning from the war with emotional problems, she set out to change all that she could.
More than 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 clinic opened in a house near the University of Tennessee campus in 1948 with just three employees. The staff included a full-time psychologist, a secretary with a master’s degree in psychology, and a part-time psychiatrist.
Initially, the clinic’s goal was to serve children with the intent to provide services to all ages in the future. Patients were charged according to their ability to pay. Not surprisingly, the caseload grew rapidly and larger facilities were required. Knox County supplied additional funding in 1951 and a second psychologist was hired. 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 on-site 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.
Helen Ross McNabb spent much of her life caring for and advocating for the sickest and poorest in her community and in her state. To quote her, “That was very important; the feeling that I was part of an ongoing movement, that you can make the world a little bit better. We all need to feel needed, don’t you think?”
Helen Ross McNabb’s dream lives on in the concern, caring and empathy demonstrated daily by a dedicated staff.
Helen Ross McNabbHow many of you have vivid memories from when you were 4 ½ years old? Can you imagine what it might take to make such an impression that it would stay with you the rest…
