The last time I saw Carlos, he tried valiantly to convince me that he was fine. "I'm moving to Los Angeles," he said. "At least it's sunny there."

I was more than a little worried. Carlos had been struggling for the better part of a year to acknowledge that he had bipolar disorder and to accept treatment for it.

It wasn't so much the medication that he had a hard time dealing with; it was the psychotherapy. He was starting to confront what he referred to, with his characteristic understatement, as "stuff" -- like the fact that his father drowned while saving him from the same fate.

Little wonder he fled treatment.

The call came late one night, from a close friend of Carlos's. He had killed himself, using a fatal mixture of prescription medication and alcohol.