No Filters Christie Watson and Rowan Egberongbe: My generation wants to die but still has
No Filters by Christie Watson and Rowan Egberongbe Chatto & Windus £14.99, 192pp
Late in 2021, Christie Watson received a phone call from her 16-year-old daughter’s school: ‘Can you collect Rowan please?… We’re just a bit worried about her… She seems manic.’
Christie Watson and Rowan Egberongbe
The signs that all was not well had begun shortly before that fateful phone call. A few nights earlier, Christie had found her daughter smoking in bed in the early hours of the morning. A former nurse, Christie put it down to teenage recklessness, confiscated the cigarettes and grounded her daughter.
It should have been the end of the matter; instead it was the beginning of a nightmare.
She collected Rowan from school to find her altered: ‘Her eyes were different. Wild. Unhinged. Dark… She looked possessed.’ Christie rang the NHS helpline 111 and Rowan told the nurse on the other end of the line that she wanted to ‘jump on a train to Brighton and go to the beach and die there, be absorbed by the sand until nothingness’.
Christie could do nothing but pray her daughter was on drugs and this sudden personality change would end if she quit them. They went to A&E, where Rowan was kept in overnight and sent home the next day with a waiting list appointment at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
At that time, she was one of 403,995 children waiting to be seen for mental health support, of whom many had been on the list more than a year. What to do in the meantime? A leaflet advised Christie to lock away anything sharp, including kitchen knives and scissors and to hide all medications. There was a list of numbers to call if Rowan was suicidal or tried to harm herself. And that was it.
Child and adolescent mental health problems have escalated drastically. In 2017 one in ten young people were affected. Six years later it was nearly one in four. The pandemic has been blamed, with children kept from school, communicating largely online.
In this book, in which each chapter is written in turns by Christie and her daughter, Rowan sheds light on what has become the norm. Her friends ‘…were always off school with mental health issues. Around once a month, my best friend Chloe was taken from school to A&E by ambulance, India went every couple of months, Kate never had to and Jaz lived in the hospital, as did Rose.’ Adding ironically: ‘We were the generation who all wanted to die but still had a 20-step skincare routine.’
For her mum, this aspect of 21stcentury teenage life came as a profound shock. As a teenager herself, Christie didn’t have one friend who was self-harming. Eating disorders and depression, yes, but not to the extent that happens now.
Things got worse before they got better, until Christie didn’t dare leave the house in case Rowan self-harmed while she was out. The breakthrough, when it came, was so small as to seem barely noticeable. Rowan had all but stopped speaking to her mother. Christie taught herself to use Snapchat and, on a whim, sent Rowan a picture of herself with her head replaced by an apple: ‘How do you like them apples,’ she joked. Amazingly, Rowan responded and Christie kept sending silly images of herself with a stick of broccoli or chicken nugget for a head, until normal communication resumed.
Today, Rowan is not only happy and healthy but well enough to study Classics at university and co-write this book. In the final chapter, mother and daughter say together: ‘Parenting a teenager with a mental health condition feels like being in the loneliest place in the world… Being a mentally unwell teenager is even lonelier and so, so frightening.’ Adding: ‘We wanted to share our story… in the hope that somebody who is reading it during the worst times sees a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.’
Certain names have been changed