KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The McNabb Center opened Tennessee’s first Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing (EmPATH) Unit last year to provide around-the-clock mental health care for people in crisis.

When the sun sets and most of Knoxville is asleep, staff members like Nichole Skinner are just beginning their shift.

“It is a completely different world,” Skinner said about the overnight shift.

As a master’s level clinician, Skinner works the 12-hour overnight shift at the EmPATH Unit, where she greets patients who arrive seeking help for mental health challenges.

“Night shift, it's interesting because you get a different type of the community, I guess a different flavor of the community,” she explained.

Skinner says for many people, the emergency room was once the only o

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