Cuban with schizophrenia remains detained despite the withdrawal of the complaint against him.

A young Cuban, 34 years old but with a mental age of 12-13, has been detained in the municipality of Minas (Camagüey) since July 18, awaiting a decision from the prosecutor regarding his case, despite having a medical history indicating that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and congenital intellectual disability. During a psychotic episode, he attacked his partner, and she, understandably, reported him. However, she has since withdrawn the report, understanding that she is not dealing with an abuser but rather with a mentally ill person. Nonetheless, he remains arrested, despite those handling his case being aware that his place is not in a jail cell but in a psychiatric hospital.

Her mother, living in Germany, blames herself for the progression of her son's illness and attributes it to the feeling of loss she experienced when she emigrated from Cuba 30 years ago. But she did not leave her children behind. She has three. The eldest lives with her in Germany, and the twin of the one who is detained in Camagüey resides in the United States.

He was also taken out of Cuba and spent some time in Spain, when his sister was living in that country, and during that time (about eight months), he improved a lot from his illness, but he fell in love on Facebook with a girl who lived in Cuba and returned to the Island, with the aggravating factor that he had entered Europe and stayed longer than permitted, and now the doors of the entire European Union are closed to him for ten years.

"You have to be really crazy to go back to live in Cuba, but he did it for a woman," says the mother who doesn't want to return to Cuba for fear that her political activism will land her in prison. And she talked about this with him before he returned to the island. "He knew he was practically saying goodbye to me because I am not going to go."

And in Cuba, the young man's health worsened. The mother has at some point blamed her son's partner for taking advantage of his intellectual disability and then breaking up with him, causing him crises. However, she is now withdrawing the complaint, understanding that she is dealing with an unstable person who cannot control their impulses, has suicidal tendencies, and urgently needs psychiatric treatment.

The fact is that days go by and the young man with a diagnosed mental illness is being treated like a criminal, instead of being given urgent admission to a hospital. His disability is congenital since, being a twin birth, he was intubated and in very serious condition, and the doctors warned at that time that he would have lasting effects. And that has indeed been the case. He suffers from respiratory problems and what is called "retraso mental" in Cuba, which is referred to as "intellectual disability" in Europe.

The diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia was made seven years ago at the Psychiatric Hospital of Camagüey, and the mother has shared this with those who are overseeing him and they have assured her that there was a possibility of his release due to his disability status. That's why she doesn't understand why, if they know he is unwell, he is being kept in detention.

The mother believes that she is still in the dungeon due to the shortage of medications for the treatment of mental illnesses in Cuba. In fact, recently, staff from the psychiatric hospital in Placetas reported that the lack of medications has left patients agitated and with deficiencies in care due to the massive emigration of a large part of the medical personnel who used to care for them.