mental illness

Throughout his journalism career, Thermopolis newspaperman E. T. Payton’s episodes of mental illness landed him in the state’s mental hospital, where he and other patients suffered sometimes brutal treatment. He died there in 1933, but his whistleblowing helped change laws and improve conditions and care.

Originally established as the Wyoming Insane Asylum by the Wyoming Territorial Legislature in 1886, the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston opened in 1889 and operates today on the same site. The institution evolved and the campus was built according to trends in psychiatric thought and therapeutic practices. Notable among its superintendents was Dr. C.H. Solier, who ran the hospital from 1891 to 1930, and successfully deflected allegations of patient abuse in the 1920s.