Anxiety and depression are increasingly plaguing American adolescents.

HIL ABBOTT USED TO PLAY LACROSSE—he was a long stick middie for Littleton High School—and was also a gifted student. He took multiple AP classes his senior year and got good grades; “the human calculator,” as his friends called him, was admitted to Auburn University’s competitive engineering program in 2016. For years, the blond-haired, quick-to-smile, considerate teenager had been a regular in the youth group at University Park United Methodist Church. And he didn’t go off to college and suddenly stop being a thoughtful and involved son and brother. One night early in his freshman year at Auburn, Abbott got a text from his mother: His younger brothers were throwing a party, and she was struggling to keep it under control. Abbott offered to send over some of his old high school buddies to help settle things down.

Sitting at the dinner table, where they all once shared regular family meals, Abbott’s mom, Courtney Cotton, smiles at the memory. Back then, almost three years ago, “he was a golden child,” she says. As she talks about her son, Cotton’s characteristic dimples come and go, but even they can’t distract from the photo of Bob Marley hanging above her. Captioned with the lyric, “You just can’t live in a negative way/Make way for the positive day,” the image feels incongruous with the seriousness of the conversation. “Hil had balance, he worked, he volunteered,” Cotton says. “We thought we were doing everything right.”

But something wasn’t right. Not long after he last texted with his mother about his brothers’ antics on that late-summer night, Hil Abbott