Colorado Insane Asylum – State Hospital
(9-14-21) In 1957, a fourteen year old boy named Mike Trimble was committed to the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo after sequential diagnoses of “retardation, schizophrenia and epilepsy.” Mike’s brother, Stephen, was only four years old. Ten years later, Mike was mainstreamed back to Denver but didn’t want anything to do with his family.
In a new nonfiction book, The Mike File: A Story of Grief and Hope, younger brother Stephen, searches for answers about what happened to his older brother.
My interest in Stephen Trimble’s book was piqued, in part, because as a teenager I spent a week at the Pueblo asylum. It was during the summer of 1969 and I was a volunteer there through my church. I mowed lawns and cut hedges in the morning and in the afternoon tagged along with a psychiatrist on his daily rounds. This was years before HIPAA and no one hesitated at having a naive teenager roaming the wards asking questions.
The hospital was in the midst of sending patients home as part of the coming national deinstitutionalization movement. In 1961, the hospital had hit a high of 6,100 patients. I spent my week observing two patients. The first was a woman who had been committed at her husband’s request. She had fought with him and seduced their teenage son to punish his father. The second patient was a young man – Chris – who’d been dropped off at the hospital as a toddler and grown up inside the asylum. By the time of my visit, doctors were convinced that the then forty-year old had never had a mental disorder. He’d been an unwanted child who was simply dumped at the doorstep. He had symptoms of Tardive dyskinesia even though records showed that he had not been heavily medicated and he acted as if he were sick because other patients had served as his role model. It was a horrific situation, which only became sadder when he was discharged to a nursing home. I heard later that Chris had died three years after I encountered him.
Although I was at the hospital only a week, my visit there left a lasting impression and vivid memories. I am glad that Stephen Trimble decided to investigate his brother’s life during this period in our history. And am grateful that he decided to share an excerpt.
The Mike File: A Story of Grief and Hope (an excerpt)
By Stephen Trimble
You step from your car, distracted, headed for an appointment. A homeless man approaches. Bearded, unkempt, wild-eyed. You know you should be empathetic, but he comes too close. No sense of boundaries, no filters, jumpy in his movements. You pull back, you stiffen, on alert, expecting a request for a handout or a disorganized rant about lurking CIA operatives.
You feel guilty, but you don’t want to get drawn into messiness. You nod, you smile tightly. You look away. You move on.
