{"id":51365,"date":"2026-04-15T11:19:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=51365"},"modified":"2026-04-15T11:19:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:19:32","slug":"cubans-self-medicate-as-crisis-takes-toll-on-mental-health-there-is-no-idea-to-hold-on-to-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=51365","title":{"rendered":"Cubans self-medicate as crisis takes toll on mental health: \u2018There is no idea to hold on to\u2019 | Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"


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C<\/span>ris S\u00e1nchez believed he had left Cuba<\/a> for good when he moved to London in 1994, but concerns for his ailing parents brought him back in 2018. Since then, the strain of life in Havana has caused him to turn to prescription drugs \u2013 \u201cJust to take the edge off things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He is not alone. Currently under a US-imposed oil blockade, and following years of economic decline, Cubans are self-administering regulated drugs in growing numbers, as a mental health crisis envelopes the island.<\/p>\n

There are few official statistics \u2013 the Cuban government has long been keen to emphasise its people\u2019s \u201cresilience\u201d \u2013 but the Guardian spoke to healthcare professionals the length and breadth of the island, who reported that most families include at least one member turning to the black market to buy antidepressants, mood stabilisers or stimulants.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Cris S\u00e1nchez returned to Cuba after 25 years in London to care for his parents. His mother has Alzheimer\u2019s and his father has Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/span> Photograph: Jason P Howe\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMy mother had a penchant for prescription drugs,\u201d said S\u00e1nchez, who trained as a linguist and taught at University College London. \u201cShe decided that she needed them each day.\u201d His mother suffers from Alzheimer\u2019s, so he worked hard to help her break her habit \u2013 only to turn to antidepressants himself.<\/p>\n

He is not an addict, but was keen to speak out and highlight how easy it is to slip into regular use. \u201cI don\u2019t regret coming back to look after my parents, but there\u2019s very little I love about being in Cuba,\u201d he said. \u201cI liked my life in London and I don\u2019t much like this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

A reliance on prescription medication is not new in Cuba, but recent events have led to a surge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are experiencing an economic situation that has repercussions whether we like it or not,\u201d said a professor of psychology in Cuba\u2019s second city of Santiago, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn a daily basis, someone might wake up without electricity, without the certainty of breakfast, or without knowing how they will get to work. This generates a great deal of stress, which is accompanied by numerous psychological manifestations: depression, intense anxiety and mental fatigue. As a result, mental health issues have increased tremendously.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Cris S\u00e1nchez, Each afternoon his parents go for a walk and he waters the plants on the terrace of the home they share in Havana. He describes the daily act as a part cleanse, part meditative exercise and simply a break from caring for them.<\/span> Photograph: Jason P Howe\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A senior aid worker in Havana said: \u201cI\u2019m witnessing this every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the US government\u2019s 3 January abduction of Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country supplying Cuba with fuel. As a result, blackouts that were already racking the island have grown worse. Petrol stations are shuttered and there is little transport. Most state offices, where 50% of the working population are employed, are closed, leaving people with little to focus on beyond surviving, and their uncertain future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in difficult times, but also a defining time, and here is a people who prefer to die standing than living on their knees,\u201d said President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel last month to a visiting group of foreign supporters, including the former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.<\/p>\n

But it seems that many Cubans are actually struggling to get out of bed. Meanwhile, even before the current crisis, Cuba\u2019s GDP had contracted by 17% since 2019. The government is all but out of money, and so the state pharmacies are empty.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Local people interacting on the streets of the Centro neighbourhood of Havana last week.<\/span> Photograph: Jason P Howe\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, now people look for relief on the black market. \u201cThere has been an increase in the number of people consuming psychotropic medications without a prescription,\u201d the psychology professor said. It only takes a phone call for the drugs, often in packages with Cyrillic, Indian or Chinese script, to be delivered by electric bikes, but at a cost.<\/p>\n

Cubans\u2019 reliance on psychotropic drugs goes back to the early 1990s when the communist government lost its sponsor, the Soviet Union, in what the then president, Fidel Castro, called the \u201cSpecial period in the time of peace\u201d.<\/p>\n

On paper, it was a worse crisis than the current one, with the economy contracting by at least 35%. Most Cuban homes carry the marks of that time, in the photographs of healthy children surrounded by skeletal adults, the passionate conversations about food over lunch \u2013 and the reliance on prescription drugs.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Customers wait inside a pharmacy in Havana last month, as Cuba\u2019s once-vaunted healthcare system, has deteriorated amid years of economic crisis and US sanctions, a decline that has accelerated this year with U.S. restrictions on oil supplies.<\/span> Photograph: Norlys Perez\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the time, doctors were quick to prescribe, and state pharmacies could provide. Another carer, who also asked to remain anonymous, said that during the special period the authorities went out of their way to fund the manufacture of psychoactive drugs. \u201cThey would have known that the country was overconsuming these types of medications, and the effect they have, but it suited them to keep people calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the situation eased \u2013 tourism was introduced, the US dollar became commonplace and a new ally was found in Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s Venezuela \u2013 the use of these drugs receded. For a while, Cubans foresaw a better future, especially in 2016 when then US president Barack Obama arrived on the island to \u201cbury the last vestiges of the cold war\u201d.<\/p>\n

But those hopes were extinguished. The Cuban government continued to drag its heels over economic reform, Donald Trump\u2019s first administration returned to a policy of maximum pressure, and Covid arrived, along with hyper-inflation, beggaring anyone on a state salary or pension.<\/p>\n

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In July 2021, protests against the state surged across the island, to be put down with force. People, often the young, started leaving in large numbers<\/a>, with up to 20% of the population fleeing abroad in the last five years. All of which has added to the psychological load on those who chose (or were forced) to remain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stress is manifesting itself in a variety of ways,\u201d said the psychology professor. \u201cThere are people losing their hair with no underlying physiological explanation. Or they struggle to concentrate \u2013 taking an hour over a task that previously would have taken 10 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the countryside, the problems are just as acute but the cost of black market prescription drugs means people are relying on more natural options. \u201cPeople here make infusions from mint, chamomile, basil, lime and lemongrass,\u201d said 28 year-old Rosangela Reyes in El Cobre, a town where people go to pray to Cuba\u2019s patron saint, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre.<\/p>\n

She was watching the body of a young cancer victim being unloaded and carried into the morgue, a death she said wasn\u2019t associated with the economic situation, but that power cuts and a lack of medicines hadn\u2019t helped.<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>A man stands in a pharmacy in Guant\u00e1namo.<\/span> Photograph: Claudia Daut\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the cities, and especially among the young, there has been a concurrent swing towards illicit drugs, long anathema in Cuba, and traditionally subject to harsh prison sentences. \u201cThere is a segment of the population that we professionals cannot access very easily,\u201d said the psychology professor. \u201cAnd that is precisely where the consumption of hard drugs that are far more lethal and potent than psychotropic medications is taking place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best known is \u201cel qu\u00edmico<\/em>\u201d, a synthetic cannabinoid known elsewhere as spice.<\/a> The Cuban government, with good reason, accuses the US \u2013 which generally berates Latin American countries for being the wellspring of drugs \u2013 of being the source.<\/p>\n

Most users though, have turned to familiar crutches: benzodiazepines such as chlordiazepoxide and clonazepam, or else alprazolam (known as Xanax), or amitriptyline and sertraline.<\/p>\n

These days, Cuba\u2019s disparities in wealth are obvious to anyone walking a Havana street. The generation who built the revolution has seen their pensions reduced to less than $10 a month, while the owners of private businesses, permitted since the economy crashed in 2021, drive past in Mercedes.<\/p>\n

Gabriel Men\u00e9ndez, a teacher in Santa Clara, a town 200 miles from Havana, said that the special period was very tough for him: \u201cAfter the birth of my second child, we didn\u2019t have enough money to live.\u201d Yet, he finds this crisis harder. \u201cThis time there is no idea to hold on to, only the need to accept the cruel reality of what is coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>A man works inside a pharmacy during a blackout in Havana last year. <\/span> Photograph: Norlys Perez\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many of the elderly are not only hungry and disillusioned but also terribly alone, their children having left during the exodus, often with beloved grandchildren. \u201cI see them moving around the neighbourhood,\u201d said S\u00e1nchez. \u201cThey are so lonely. They are seeing the grandchildren grow up on a screen, often not speaking the same language.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the psychology professor in Santiago it is no surprise so many have returned to the prescription drugs they last used in the 1990s. \u201cIt is precisely the uncertainty \u2013 the not knowing how long this might last \u2013 that serves as an aggravating factor,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you know a problem will last seven days, you might think, \u2018I can handle it.\u2019 But we are living through a situation where the end is unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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