One in five Spanish youth have used anxiety or insomnia pills, often without prescription

Nearly one in five Spanish teenagers has taken a pill for anxiety or insomnia at some point. What makes this statistic sharper is what comes next: almost one in ten obtained those pills without a doctor's prescription at all.

The backdrop is a mental health crisis that has quietly deepened across Spain. The World Health Organization estimates that roughly 970 million people worldwide experience psychiatric illness in any given year. In Spain alone, that number reached approximately 17 million people in 2024. Among young people specifically, the picture is even more acute. More than 40 percent of students between 13 and 18 years old believe they have suffered from a mental health condition in the past year, according to UNICEF's latest survey.

Alicia is 20 now. She has struggled with insomnia since childhood and was prescribed mirtazapine to manage it. Elena is 22, dealing with anxiety for more than two years. She attends therapy but also takes diazepam on her own, without a prescription, because she says it is the only thing that actually calms her down. Their stories are not outliers. A study found that 19.6 percent of Spanish students aged 14 to 18 have used anxiety or insomnia medication at least once. Nearly 10 percent of those obtained the drugs without a specific prescription written for them.

The reason is structural. Public mental health services in Spain are overwhelmed. One in four Spanish citizens waits more than three months for psychological care through the public system, according to a 2024 study by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. That bottleneck has a direct consequence: when people cannot access therapy, they reach for medication instead. Juan Antequera, a clinical psychologist at the Madrid College of Psychology, explains that the saturation of public psychologists has led to a kind of medicalization by default, even in cases where psychological treatment should come first.

The drugs themselves carry real weight. Alicia describes the side effects as a kind of hangover when she wakes—a heaviness that makes it possible to fall asleep anywhere without warning. Elena experiences severe headaches and loss of appetite. These are not minor inconveniences. They are the reason these medications require medical oversight and cannot be purchased over the counter. Yet Alicia and Elena continue taking them because, they say, nothing else works as quickly or as completely. The pills offer relief when relief feels urgent.

Experts warn against this path. The dependency risk is real, and the side effects compound over time. Juan Antequera recommends that anyone considering these medications work directly with a healthcare professional rather than self-dosing. Antonio José Durán, another voice in the conversation, suggests exploring gentler alternatives first—natural relaxants like valerian root or hawthorn—before turning to prescription pharmaceuticals. But those alternatives require time, patience, and access to guidance that the current system struggles to provide. For now, young people caught between untreated mental illness and an inaccessible healthcare system are making their own choices, often in the dark.