People were still talking about mental illness in hushed tones, and they barely discussed suicide at all in 2003.
That’s when Karla Smith, a 26-year-old college student diagnosed with manic depression — now known as bipolar disorder— ended her life. It left her Shiloh family devastated.
“(Karla) was very, very intelligent,” her father, Tom Smith, said at the time. “She was charming. She was beautiful. She was a superb writer. She was three classes away from getting her bachelor’s degree in English literature when she shot herself.”…