Jeff Trowbridge was taking down Christmas decorations the morning he received a call that destroyed him.
The love of her life, Ian Horner, was missing. One of Horner’s relatives had called to ask Trowbridge if he knew the license plate number of Horner’s car. Shortly afterward, Trowbridge would learn that Horner, 33, had committed suicide in the middle of the night. Her body was found near a cottonwood tree in Cherry Creek State Park, along the trails where Trowbridge and Horner had walked and talked on their first date nine years earlier.
Trowbridge had feared this day for over a year. So did Horner, who had attempted to end his life several times before that January night 10 months ago. Horner had sought help to get better at mental health clinics and hospitals in Denver. He had tried ketamine, electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation and at least 17 medications. He even tried to sign up for an experimental brain treatment in China.
What happened to Horner is the story of a failing and fragmented mental health system that couldn’t save a man who was literally begging for help.
And for Trowbridge, identifying why the system failed became an obsession.
Trowbridge isn’t the only one trying to make sense of a loved one’s suicide. About 1,300 people have committed suicide in Colorado in each of the past five years, according to the state health department. But for Trowbridge, the search for a reason led to months spent establishing a meticulous timeline of the last year of Horner’s life, reading emails Horner had written before his death and a collection of medical records. The documents, some of which Trowbridge shared with the Colorado Sun, are a written record of Horner’s struggle to overcome a deep depression.
They reveal a desperate man in need of help but without a central connection point to coordinate various medications and therapies. Horner spent days, sometimes weeks, in several psychiatric hospitals and behavioral health clinics that did not communicate with each other, and was released even though he said he feared suicide. Between suicide attempts, he fought to obtain insurance coverage and appealed treatment denials.
“How can someone ask for so much help, go through so many levels of care, survive multiple warning events – and still find themselves without the sustained intervention needed to keep them alive? » asked Trowbridge.
In a pile of documents, Trowbridge wrote down all the questions he wanted answered.
What if all the therapists and doctors who treated Horner had talked to each other? What if Horner hadn’t had to wait so long for prior authorization from his insurance company before he could begin transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment? And, perhaps startling, but still: What if Cherry Creek State Park had a gate that kept cars out in the middle of the night?
Withdrawing from relationships
Trowbridge and Horner met in 2017 on an app called OkCupid. On their first date, while walking in the park, they bonded over their shared love of David Lynch’s horror films and the filmmaker’s best-known series, the supernatural and frightening “Twin Peaks.”
For Trowbridge, who had a career in the U.S. Navy and was in his 50s, the relationship was the first time he had a boyfriend. They moved in together after about a year, vacationing around the world and hosting friends for game and movie nights.
“I could have gone on forever the way we were,” Trowbridge said in a cafe interview, “because he was really good to me. We had no problems for almost eight years. We made fun of heterosexual couples, like we had a perfect relationship.”
Horner seemed shy at first, but he was fiercely loving, quick-witted and had a kind soul, his family wrote in his obituary. “Ian loved strange, unique, or immersive experiences: pop culture, the Stanley Hotel, the Sasquatch Museum, or going to a haunted bridge in the middle of the night and insisting on ‘following the voices I hear under the bridge,’ much to the dismay of others,” they wrote.
But toward the end of 2024, Horner experienced something resembling a breakdown, or what Trowbridge called a “scary deterioration.”
“Anxiety and depression took over him,” he said.
Trowbridge, 61, knew Horner had previously been depressed and had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2017, before they met. But they were happy together for years, until Horner’s anxiety became so severe that he asked to go to an AllHealth Network treatment center in Littleton. He stayed for five days before being released on an increased dose of an antidepressant, Trintellix.
Then, on Christmas Day a few weeks later, Horner told Trowbridge he was considering suicide. He had a plan that he described in such detail that Trowbridge was terrified.
“I was just horrified,” Trowbridge said, “just horrified.”
Horner, a software programmer and information technology specialist, was unhappy at work, including at Toastmasters, then in a remote job with Arapahoe County, then back at Toastmasters. In the months before his death, Horner took an extended leave of absence and eventually resigned. Job changes led him to change insurance companies several times and eventually apply for Medicaid.
He was unhappy in their relationship, unhappy in life, Trowbridge recalls. During a trip to Mexico with friends in February 2025, Horner was so depressed he didn’t want to get out of bed. Horner left the trip early, alone. In March, Horner moved. They separated and decided to share custody of their dog, a Texas rescue named Janey.
“He was withdrawing from all his relationships,” Trowbridge said.
Ten months later, he was gone.
“Feeling at peace with my existence”
According to Trowbridge, Horner did everything he was supposed to do to get help. However, the system did not respond.
“He did what patients are constantly told to do,” Trowbridge said. “He sought help, underwent treatment, took medication, practiced coping skills and repeatedly revealed that he was losing hope. »
Horner explained what he felt in November 2024, when the anxiety was all-consuming, in an email he wrote to a therapist and which Trowbridge now keeps in his stack of files. “I kept having obsessive thoughts telling me that I needed to break up with Jeff, even though we both loved each other,” Horner wrote.
The antidepressant he was taking increased his anxiety, he said, and he “couldn’t stop his thoughts.”
After the men separated, in March 2025, Horner spent about a month in a partial hospitalization program at Highlands Behavioral Health. In June, he enrolled in an intensive outpatient program at the Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center. He participated in the program again in July, the same month he attempted to end his life with an overdose of an anti-anxiety medication.
In late July, while staying at Raleigh House, a residential treatment center in Denver, Horner left the center in an Uber with a sheet stuffed in his backpack. He called Trowbridge from Cherry Creek State Park, where Horner was picked up by law enforcement officers and taken to Parker Adventist Hospital’s emergency department for a 24-hour mental health hold.
“I have no more ideas about what to do,” Horner wrote in an email to a therapist in July. “I can’t go back to my job because it’s too stressful and living alone in my apartment isn’t good for me. I’m 100% done with group therapy. I’ve already done way too much and it’s not helping me anymore.
“I’m done trying to control my thoughts and feelings, because it doesn’t help. I still just want to die. I don’t care about anything anymore. I just want to be able to feel at peace with my existence.”
The next few months will be a jumble of treatments at various clinics, stays at hospitals and psychiatric centers in multiple networks, overlapping appointments, and battles over insurance coverage and prior authorization requirements.
Centennial Peaks Hospital. HCA HealthONE in Aurora. Independent therapists. SonderMind, a Denver-based, primarily virtual mental health company. A holistic health clinic to test for Lyme disease and “mold toxicity.” Vitamin supplements and probiotics, walks and journaling. Doses of psilocybin tea. A prescription for ketamine. Request that insurance cover transcranial magnetic stimulation. A request to participate in a clinical trial in China on deep brain stimulation, an experimental treatment to stimulate the brain’s gray matter.
Trowbridge now wonders whether the delay in insurance approval for transcranial magnetic stimulation compounded Horner’s stress and prevented his potential progress. Horner first sought brain stimulation treatment, which uses coils on a person’s head to send electrical impulses to nerves in the brain, in May 2025. Five months later, in October, he was still trying to get the prior authorization required by his insurance company, records show.
One of his therapists argued in a letter to UnitedHealthcare that magnetic stimulation treatment was the “new intention intervention” for his “treatment-resistant depression.” She listed 17 medications that Horner had tried without success.
During this time, Horner continued to report suicidal thoughts. A medical file described him as being in a “near catatonic” state.
Another mental health professional rated Horner’s suicide risk as “low,” although he told the therapist he had suicidal thoughts. The day after his appointment, he attempted suicide, one of several documented attempts. It was Halloween and Horner and Trowbridge were planning to watch horror movies.
