Lost and found: a mother and daughter on surviving teenage mental breakdown in the social media age
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In an extract from their unflinching memoir, Christie Watson and daughter Rowan Egberongbe recall the post-Covid psychological collapse that fractured their bond, and how social media was both the hero and villain of the hour. “Can you collect Rowan, please? It’s pastoral care at the school. We’re just a bit worried about her ... She seems manic.’.
![[A family photo of baby Rowan.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4963a011aba7d5b6c3a9e52ad9fa2786d57e550a/0_127_1200_1473/master/1200.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“Manic? What do you mean?”. “I think it’s best you come in.”. The first night I realised that something was seriously wrong with my daughter, Rowan, was in late 2021. We’d been through lockdown. Rowan had sailed through her GCSE exams with flying colours. Her future was bright. The world was waking up, like Sleeping Beauty after a long, long sleep, and the air fizzed with possibilities. Rowan, like all her friends, bolted into being 16 with enthusiasm and joy.
![[A selfie of Christie and Rowan. ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9572e9ca266ffa752c30cc2277994312b1459b7f/0_0_1599_959/master/1599.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Everything changed suddenly. A few nights earlier, I’d found her smoking in bed, propped up on her pillows, without a care in the world. I’d put it down to teenage recklessness, poor impulse control and an immature frontal lobe. Bad behaviour. Fairly normal. I grounded her and confiscated her cigarettes. But she’d been off since then. Moodier. Snappy.
![[Christie Watson and Rowan Egberongbe. ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e100e30d7bb50fc3ce97250212b7d557f02567a0/0_675_4480_5597/master/4480.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
I arrived at the school to find her altered. Her eyes were different. Wild. Unhinged. Dark. She looked at me but didn’t seem to recognise me at all. She looked possessed. I quizzed her in the car. What had she taken? Surely this was drugs. My children had told me stories of friends regularly smoking weed before school and taking ketamine in parks, as if this was standard practice for many teens. Rowan denied taking drugs, of course, but the more she spoke, the more worried I became. Her words were not right. In the wrong order, somehow. She talked about time and feeling like the wind.
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