The New Yorker:

A family tragedy sheds light on a burgeoning mental-health emergency.

By Andrew Solomon 

My husband and I first met Trevor Matthews when he and our son, George, started kindergarten together at St. Bernard’s, a private boys’ school on the Upper East Side. Trevor was perhaps the brightest kid in the class. In first grade, he was already reading adult narrative nonfiction. He could be charming, generous, and humane. But he could also turn suddenly violent. At my son’s seventh-birthday party, Trevor bit another boy on the ear so hard that the mark was still visible when that child next went to school. Trevor terrorized the smaller kids in the class, and, if they pushed back, he would try to get them in trouble. He was shrewd in his manipulations. In second grade, he tried extracting cash from other boys by threatening to spread embarrassing rumors. “Trevor was in trouble more than everyone combined,” a classmate recalled. Parents complained, and Trevor was frequently disciplined. “By first grade, he was already awash in a sea of conflict,” one parent said. “I remember seeing his mother’s anguish and just wanting the path for her son to be a little less hard. But it was hard.”

Trevor’s mother, Angela Matthews, a driven intellectual-property lawyer in her early forties, studied ballet and still carries herself like a dancer. Her intelligence and the intensity of her character can make her intimidating, but she is also given to acts of tremendous kindness. Trevor’s father, Billy Matthews, who works in finance, is affable and athletic. They have a daughter, Agnes, three and a half years younger than Trevor; Billy also has two sons, Trey and Tristen, from a previous marriage.

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