The Mike File

Book excerpt: In The Mike File, Stephen Trimble grapples with his long-gone brother's life and death and looks behind doors he's barricaded in himself. His tender narrative grows from his quest to choose empathy and his refusal to let their mother's lifelong disinclination to talk about her grief and guilt render Mike's life invisible. Mike was a sweet kid but challenged in school. And then, in 1957, when "Stevie" was six and Mike 14, rage and psychosis overwhelmed Mike. His new diagnosis: paranoid schizophrenia, capable of violence. Their parents had no choice but to commit Mike to the Colorado State Hospital. He never lived at home again. Mike's heartrending life mirrored the history of our treatment of mental illness in America. He spent nine years in overcrowded Colorado mental institutions. When mainstreamed back to Denver, he rejected his family. Ten years later, he died alone in a boarding home, undiscovered for three days. The Denver media used his lonely death to expose these "ratholes" warehousing people with mental illness. Trimble closes by imagining a more hopeful vision of community care that could have eased Mike's life and granted the author a lifelong relationship with his big brother. Equal parts detective story, social history, journey of self-discovery, and compassionate and unsparing memorial to a family and a forgotten life, The Mike File will move every reader with a relative or friend touched by psychiatric illness or disability-a bond that embraces nearly everyone.