The History of Psychiatry in New Mexico 1889-1989

By Walter W. Winslow M.D.

BOOK SUMMARY

The history of psychiatry in New Mexico begins with the Territorial Legislature establishing the Insane Asylum in Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1889. It wasnt until after World War II that a few psychiatrists began to locate in New Mexico outside of the state institution and began to practice office-based psychiatry in New Mexico. When the starte legislature established the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in 1964 psychiatry began to take its place in the medical community. In 1970 it was deemed there was a sufficient number of psychiatrist in New Mexico to organize themselves into a District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association. Prior to that time the psychiatrists in New Mexico belonged to the Intermountain Psychiatric Association, a District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association that included many of the intermountain states.
In the late 1960s the number of psychiatrist in the New Mexico increased exponentially with the development of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and with its focus on community psychiatry. Community mental health services were generously funded with federal grants and grew rapidly in the late 1960s and 1970s. The first community mental health center funded in New Mexico was in Albuquerque, the Bernallilo County-University of New Mexico Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center. The University of New Mexico Mental Health Center started in 1967 with an annual budget of few thousand dollars grew to over 15 million dollars by 1989. In 1977 the Childrens Psychiatric Hospital opened its door for the treatment of children with psychiatric disorders and by 1989 had an annual budget of over six million dollars.
During this same time frame the University of New Mexico School of Medicines Department of Psychiatry grew rapidly. In 1964, its first year, the Department of Psychiatry had three faculty members. That number grew and by 1989 the number was just under forty tenure-track members with another forty-five with Letter of Academic Title. In 1967 the Department of Psychiatry developed a residency program in psychiatry, a four-year program that trained physicians for the specialty of psychiatry. Over the next two and a half decades the Department trained over one hundred and fifteen psychiatrists, with approximately fifty percent remaining in New Mexico to practice in their chosen field. In 1979 a Child and Adolescent Fellowship, a two year program was initiated by the Child and Adolescent Division of the Department of Psychiatry, and in the next decade graduated over two dozen child psychiatrists many who remained in the state to provide services to New Mexicos children and adolescents.
During the first 50 years of psychiatry in New Mexico (1889-1939) the majority of psychiatric care was provided in the state mental institution, the New Mexico State Hospital but during the next fifty years significant changes occurred. The primary focus of psychiatric care was in the community either in outpatient care by office-based psychiatrists or in the two private institutions, Nazareth Hospital or Sandia Ranch Sanitarium. The state hospital in 1923 had 1350 beds whereas by 1989 that number of beds had dropped to around 200.
This book is an attempt to trace the events of the past one hundred years that contributed to these changes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 14, 2005
• ISBN: 9781465333520

Walter W. Winslow M.D.

Author’s Biography Walter W. Winslow, MD, is professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and a Life Fellow in the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. He joined the faculty of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in 1966 serving as chairman of the department of psychiatry for 17 years. He was also director of the University of New Mexico mental health center from 1970 to 1991, the first comprehensive community mental health center in New Mexico. In 1978 he was appointed director of mental health programs that included the mental health center, the children's psychiatric hospital and the center for alcoholism, substance abuse and addictions. Prior to that he was on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Georgetown University Medical School. He also served ten years with the veterans administration hospitals in Cincinnati, Washington, DC. and in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Winslow was the fourth president of the New Mexico Psychiatric Association (1974), and served eight years as the New Mexico Representative to the Assembly of District Branches of the American Psychiatric Association head-quartered in Washington, DC. He was then elected and served four years as Area VII Representative to the Assembly of District Branches (1981-1985) representing New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii and the four Western Canadian Provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba). In 1984 he won the prestigious Assembly Speaker’s Award of the American Psychiatric Association for his leadership in the planning and organization of continuing education programs for Area VII psychiatrists. He was appointed by New Mexico Governor David Cargo to the Governor’s Advisory Council on Drug Abuse in 1970 and was appointed by New Mexico Governor Bruce King to the Metropolitan Criminal Justice Coordinating Council in 1973. He is a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is also a Fellow (Emeritus) of the American College of Psychiatrists, and is a retired member of the American Medical Association, the New Medical Society, the Greater Albuquerque Medical Association, and the Psychiatric Medical Association of New Mexico. Dr. Winslow is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (Psychiatry) (1964) and licensed in the State of New Mexico since 1968. He has traveled extensively in New Mexico having lectured and consulted with mental health programs from Farmington to Carlsbad and from Portales to Gallup. He has published over 50 articles and book chapters in the scientific literature and has presented scientific papers at national meetings in the U.S. and Canada. He and his wife Barbara have lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 1966.

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Copyright © 2005 by Walter W. Winslow, M.D.

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

APPENDIX D

APPENDIX E

APPENDIX F

APPENDIX G

APPENDIX H

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX J

APPENDIX K

TRADITIONAL END NOTES

CHAPTER 1

One Hundred Years of Psychiatry in New Mexico

On February 28, 1889, Bernard Shandon Rodey

introduced legislation in the territorial legislature that created the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the agricultural college that later became New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, the School of Mines in Socorro, and the Insane Asylum in Las Vegas, New Mexico. This legislative action gave each of the major cities in New Mexico at that time a governmental facility to call their own that would provide much-needed employment for its citizens. This legislation passed the Twenty-eighth Legislative Assembly and was signed into law by Governor Edmund Ross on March 3, 1889. It marked the beginning of modern psychiatry in the state of New Mexico over one hundred years ago.

But even a hundred years ago psychological healing was not a new concept in the Land of Enchantment. A form of psychological healing had been practiced for over a thousand years by Indian medicine men among the Navajo, the Apache, and the Pueblo peoples, with their deep understanding of the relationship between the body and the mind, which is, to them, the spirit. They were very much aware that illnesses both physical and mental were often due to disturbances or conflicts between the spirit and the body. We still have much to learn from our Native American friends about the oneness of the mind and the body.

Let me return to the modern era. The New Mexico State Hospital, originally known as the New Mexico State Insane Asylum and now known as the Las Vegas Medical Center, proudly celebrated its one hundredth anniversary in February 1989. It served the people of New Mexico as the only treatment facility in the state of New Mexico specifically set aside for the treatment of the mentally ill for the first fifty years of its existence. Other facilities for the treatment of the mentally ill became available during the last half of the twentieth century, but the state facility continued to play a rather significant role in providing a portion of that care.

Not a lot has been written about the state hospital during its one hundred years of existence, but some data have been recorded that give us brief cross-sectional glimpses of what institutional life was like during those early years. We can learn a little from the report to the legislature from its director, medical superintendent, steward, and matron of the New Mexico Insane Asylum covering the period from November 30, 1908, to December 1, 1911. The report states that in 1908, the hospital had a census of 200 patients—121 males and 79 females; but by 1911, three years later, the number had grown to 562. During that three-year period, the hospital admitted 472 new patients—302 men and 170 women—and discharged 110 patients. Seventy-one were reported as recovered, 23 as improved, and 16 had been discharged as unimproved. Discharge diagnosis did not follow the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM IV criteria as we know it today, but it is possible to get a pretty good feel for the kind of illnesses the staff was treating. The commonest diagnosis during that period was dementia praecox (schizophrenia), a mental condition first described by Kraepelin and is still one of the commonest reasons for admission to a mental hospitals today. Another relatively common condition mentioned in their report was general paresis of the insane (GPI), a neurological condition resulting from the spirochete that causes the venereal disease syphilis. Mania and paranoia were also well represented as was manic depression, dementia, and senile dementia.

During those three years, there were ninety-three deaths that represent about 17 percent of the 562 patients in the hospital at the end of the year 1911. Causes of death were reported to be exhaustion from dementia, inanition, suicide by hanging, and pulmonary tuberculosis

In 1923 there were 1,350 patients in the state hospital—450 females and 900 males—according to a report written by Richard Escudero in 1965 entitled Acuerdos del Asilo (Remembrances of the Asylum). Mr. Escudero started his career at the hospital in 1923 at the age of seventeen and wrote a precis about his experiences working as an orderly at the state hospital. Politics were important then as now. He states in his report that "the politicians ran el asilo [the asylum], and in any changes in the state administration from Democrat to Republican, or vice versa, the entire staff was fired and replaced by loyal members of the winning party." The New Mexico State Hospital was managed by a board of directors appointed by and responsible to the governor of the state. It wasn’t until 1961 when the legislature passed the State Personnel Act that politics became less intrusive in the running of the hospital. Things seem now only slightly better in terms of political interference, and sometimes it seems even more destructive. For example, take the 1987 physical assault on Tom Deiker, director of the state hospital, by one of the hospital’s disgruntled employees whom he dismissed for cause without the approval of a local politico. That led to Dr. Deiker not only being assaulted by this employee but also resulted in him being summarily relieved of his job by the State Department of Health and Environment. There were 850 psychiatric beds in the New Mexico State Hospital in 1965 with a daily census of 864. In 1968 there were 629 mental patients in the state mental hospital, and by 1975 that number decreased to 357 influenced by the opening of the University of New Mexico Mental Health Center’s 44 beds in Albuquerque in 1969. By 1989 the number of beds at the state hospital was under 200.

In terms of institutional psychiatry, I next want to discuss briefly the Albuquerque Veterans Administration Hospital which opened its doors for the care of veterans on August 22, 1932, primarily for the treatment of tuberculosis. It is said the facility had a few beds for psychiatry, but little is known of the treatments that were provided for the mentally ill veteran after World War I. In 1951 a 267-bed addition known as Building 20 was added for the treatment of medical and surgical patients, and that expansion allowed space for a small mental hygiene clinic. This clinic was very small, and even in 1962, about ten years later, the staff consisted of a psychiatrist chief, a psychologist, and two social workers. In 1962 a psychiatric unit was modernized to include eight beds, a closed unit which was primarily a holding unit for patients awaiting transfer to the state hospital in Las Vegas, New Mexico, or to another veterans hospital in the southwest with the capability of providing longer term inpatient psychiatric care. The University of New Mexico School of Medicine became involved with the psychiatry service of the Albuquerque Veterans Administration Hospital in 1964, and I will discuss that in more detail in another chapter.

Nazareth Hospital, operated by the sisters of the Order of St. Dominic of Nazareth, Grand Rapids, Michigan, was turned into a psychiatric hospital sometime in the early 1940s. It was operated under that name until 1974 when Vista Hill Foundation based in San Diego, California, purchased it. The name was then changed to Vista Sandia Hospital. At that time, most of the practicing psychiatrists used Vista Sandia Hospital for their inpatient admissions. Its first director and administrator was Dr. John McCormick and Leonard Knuckles, respectively. A few years later Dr. Audrey Worrell from Connecticut was hired as director with the expressed purpose to upgrade the standards of practice at Vista Sandia. These efforts failed in part because some of the active medical staff were not in agreement with these changes and began to admit their patients to other area psychiatric hospitals. At that time there was also intense competition from the over-bedding from recently opened psychiatric hospitals that had established themselves in Albuquerque shortly after the state repealed its Certificate of Need laws. Vista Sandia’s competitors were Heights Psychiatric Hospital, Charter Hospital, Memorial Hospital and Kaseman Presbyterian Hospital. Unfortunately Vista Sandia Hospital under this kind of competition was forced to close it doors December 15, 1987.

In the late 1940s Dr. John W. Myers and Dr. Alan Jacobson were heavily involved in the clinical operation of Nazareth Hospital and Sandia Ranch Sanitarium, both psychiatrists having admitting and treatment privileges for psychiatric patients from their private community practices. Most of the psychiatrists practicing in the community would hospitalize their patients in one of these facilities. The Sandia Ranch Sanitarium was a converted Santa Fe Trail stagecoach stop. It was closed as a psychiatric hospital in 1969 to become the Chapman Nursing Home.

The Bernalillo County-Indian Hospital, a county general hospital, had eighteen psychiatric beds that served indigent patients from Bernalillo County and Native Americans from this area of the state. In 1968 all of the psychiatric beds in the Bernalillo County-Indian Hospital were closed when the newly built Bernalillo County-University of New Mexico Mental Health Mental Retardation Center opened its forty-four inpatient beds.

In the 1940s the two most prominent and perhaps the only two psychiatrists in the city of Albuquerque were Dr. John Myers and Dr. Alan Jacobson. Dr. John W. Myers came to New Mexico in 1936 and was active in both of the private psychiatric facilities, Nazareth Hospital and Sandia Ranch Sanitarium. Sandia Ranch closed in 1969 soon after Dr. John W. Myers died. Dr. Alan Jacobson came to New Mexico in 1946 and had a very active practice treating patients in both Nazareth and Sandia Ranch. Dr. Fred Langner, who did not complete a psychiatric residency, was a very active psychiatrist particularly at Nazareth Hospital. He was known in the early 1960s for his use of LSD as one of his therapeutic modalities, though its use was entirely experimental. He was also a strong proponent of electroshock treatment. Other psychiatrists in New Mexico in those early years included Dr. Warren Brown who came from the Baylor School of Medicine where he had been chairman of the department of psychiatry and associate dean of the medical school prior to his arrival in Albuquerque in 1952. He chose New Mexico for its dry climate because he thought it might improve the health of one of his children. Dr. Brown practiced here many years until his death in 1982. Dr. Torrens joined Dr. Brown as a partner in 1954 and practiced psychiatry in Albuquerque until his retirement in December of 1990. Though Dr. Torrens was in full-time private practice, he was very active in the UNM Department of Psychiatry as a clinical professor until his retirement. Drs. Brown and Torrens were involved and very helpful in promoting the early development of the department of psychiatry in the school of medicine. Dr Torrens was active in the department’s educational programs supervising psychotherapy for psychiatric residents and lecturing on various topics in the curriculum but probably was most well known for his lectures in forensic psychiatry. Dr. Torrens was active in the medical community as well as in the private psychiatric community, and this gave him an opportunity to play a major role in assisting the department of psychiatry and the school of medicine in resolving problems with town-gown relationships.

Dr. George Ross who came to New Mexico in 1954 was well known for his devotion to children and adolescents. Though he was not board certified in child psychiatry, he was the first psychiatrist in New Mexico to focus his efforts on the treatment of children and adolescents. He was instrumental in the development of the Albuquerque Child Guidance Clinic and served as its director until 1967 when Dr. Britton Ruebush, a child psychologist originally from Deming, New Mexico, was appointed its director.

In Santa Fe in those early years, there were very few psychiatrists. They included Drs. Rudy Kieve, Elsa Brumlop, Eugene Rosenbaum, and Sam Swedenborg. Later they were joined by Dr. John Talley and Dr. William Stennis. In 1942 according to the records of the American Psychiatric Association, there were only four of their members residing in New Mexico. They were listed as Dr. Merton O. Blakeslee, superintendent of the New Mexico Home and Training School in Los Lunas; Dr. John Myers, medical director of Sandia Ranch Sanitarium; Dr. John R. Shawver, Albuquerque Veterans Administration Hospital; and Dr. A. B. Stewart who was in private practice in Albuquerque. There may have been other psychiatrists in New Mexico at that time, but apparently they were not members of the American Psychiatric Association. In 1943 there were seven APA members in New Mexico. They were Drs. Merton Blakelsee, John Myers, John R. Shawver, Elmer Peterson, Augustus Stewart in Albuquerque, Rudy Kieve in Alamagordo, and Dorothy C. Leighton in Ramah on the Navajo Reservation. In 1945 there were six members: Drs. Richard S. Ahrens, superintendent of the NM Home and Training School; Kenneth W. Chapman at Fort Stanton; John Myers; John Shawver; A. B. Stewart in Albuquerque; and Rudy Kieve who had moved to Roswell. In 1948 the number totaled eight and included Dr. William C. Porter, medical superintendent of the NM Home and Training School; Dr. Richard C. Ahrens; Dr. Emmet R. Johnson; Dr. Wilfred C. McKechnie, superintendent at the New Mexico State Hospital; Dr. John Myers; Dr. Alan Jacobson; and Dr. A. B. Stewart. Dr. Rudy Kieve had now moved to Clovis. In 1949 Dr. Alan M. Drummond is listed in Santa Fe, but I have been unable to find out much else about him.

In 1956 the membership roster increased to ten with Drs. Warren Brown, John Torrens, Martin Halverson, George Ross, A. B. Stewart, William Porter, John Myers, Alan Jacobson, Lawrence Smith at the New Mexico State Hospital, and Dr. Rudy Kieve who had now moved to Santa Fe. In 1957 there were thirteen members of the APA with the addition of the names of Drs. Arthur Arnold, N. V. Kleinmann Jr., William H. Vicary, Ralph Zemer, and C. G. Stillinger who was superintendent of the NM State Hospital. By 1960 the APA membership had risen to eighteen with the addition of Drs. Thomas Evilsizer Jr. in Farmington, Alan Hovda, Fred Langner, Leonard Seidenberg in Albuquerque, Conrad Frey at the New Mexico State Hospital, Bryce Boyer in Mescalero, L. Willard Shankel in Roswell, and Elsa Brumlop in Santa Fe. By 1966 there were thirty-three members of the APA in New Mexico. By that time a few members of the University of New Mexico Department of Psychiatry began to show up on the on the APA roster. They would include Drs. George Engel and Rueben Siegel from the Albuquerque Veterans Administration Hospital, and Drs. Robert A Senescu, Leonardo Garcia-Bunuel, John Kramer, and Walter Winslow.

From 1957 to 1972 most of the APA members in New Mexico belonged to the Intermountain Psychiatric Association, a district branch of the American Psychiatric Association that was founded in September 1957. This organization represented New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. These states did not yet have a sufficient number of members of the American Psychiatric Association for each state to have its own district branch so they joined together to qualify for one district branch known as the Intermountain Psychiatric Association. The original signers of the constitution and bylaws of the Intermountain Psychiatric Association were Drs. Beverly T. Mead, Samuel Wick, Myrick W. Pullen Jr., Dale Cornell, John K. Torrens, S. Wayne Smith, and H. Ryle Lewis. In 1971 the New Mexico psychiatrists voted to leave the Intermountain Psychiatric Association and organize their own district branch. At that time New Mexico had approximately forty psychiatrists and that was felt to be the critical mass needed to organize their own district branch. With some regrets on both sides, that ended a very collegial and cordial relationship with members of the other six intermountain states. It was only a few years until the remaining intermountain states organized their own district branches.

CHAPTER 2

Psychiatric Medical Association of New Mexico

Prior to 1971, psychiatrists practicing in New Mexico who

wished to belong to their parent professional organization, the American Psychiatric Association, generally belonged to the Intermountain Psychiatric Association, a district branch of the American Psychiatric Association with headquarters in Washington, DC. This was necessary because New Mexico was deemed to have insufficient numbers of psychiatrists to form their own district branch. Instead they could belong to the Intermountain District Branch. On November 17, 1971, on a Sunday morning, approximately forty psychiatrists met on the second floor of the Albuquerque Federal Savings and Loan Building on Central Avenue to discuss the organization of a New Mexico District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association. A number of psychiatrists at that time were beginning to press for their own New Mexico District Branch. Dr. Robert Senescu, chairman of the department of psychiatry in the school of medicine at the University of New Mexico, and a few others did not think the number of psychiatrists was large enough to properly carry out the duties and responsibilities that go with a district branch organization. Dr. John Torrens also was of the opinion it would not be prudent to break away from the Intermountain District Branch until after Dr. Neil McCullough who was from New Mexico had completed his term of office as president of that organization. However, 1971 seemed to be the right time. A small group of interested psychiatrists under the informal leadership of Dr. John Torrens met as a steering committee on September 28, 1971, and agreed to call a general organizational meeting for Sunday November 11, 1971. Dr. Torrens called the meeting to order and was elected temporary presiding officer and Dr. Bill Stennis temporary secretary, so the meeting could proceed with the business of formally organizing a state-wide psychiatric organization as a district branch of the American Psychiatric Association. After a few