Horror sells seats. That’s what producers told Lindsay Mary Galvin Rauch when she expressed her family’s disappointment about how they were portrayed in “Six Schizophrenic Brothers,” a new documentary that’s going gangbusters on HBO Max and social media. The four-part series chronicles the psychosis, murder, suicide and incest that interlaced the lives of the Galvins, the Colorado Springs family made famous in Robert Kolker’s award-winning, New York Times bestselling 2020 nonfiction book, “Hidden Valley Road.
” “The series misrepresents what happened,” said youngest sister Rauch. “My poor parents. They’re portrayed as monsters.
They were the kindest, most highly educated parents in the world. The series misrepresents schizophrenia grossly.” After moving to town in the 1960s, Don and Mimi Galvin raised a dozen children — 10 sons and two daughters — on Hidden Valley Road, in the Woodmen Valley part of town.
Six of the boys were diagnosed with schizophrenia, beginning with the oldest son, Donald. Three of the sons were already dead by the time Don died in 2003. One, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, killed his girlfriend and then himself.
Mimi died in 2017. Today Donald lives in a Pueblo facility for the mentally ill and Matthew lives in a Springs facility. Rauch, who lives near Telluride, continues to help care and advocate for them through The Galvin Family Trust.
She also travels the world working and speaking as a mental health advocate..