Since 1949, the month of May has marked Mental Health Awareness Month. This year, instead of advocating for better mental health initiatives and care, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, is recklessly encouraging polarizing and damaging perspectives of life-saving resources.
During a mental health summit conducted by the Make America Healthy Again initiative earlier this month, Kennedy expressed an intent to reduce “psychiatric overprescribing” as he defines it, specifically naming children as his main area of focus. As there is always nuance in these types of conversations, not all of Kennedy’s points were inherently wrong, with him emphasizing, “Let me be clear: If you are taking psychiatric medication, we are not telling you to stop. We are making sure you, and your clinician, have the information and support to make the right decision for you.”
By no means is the mental health field perfect — it is underfunded, understaffed and misunderstood. However, the field cannot be minimized in such a one-sided way and the MAHA administration should be focusing instead on why so many individuals are suffering from mental health crises and how to construct a system with enough resources to accommodate them. Those struggling with their mental health are not numbers, but people in vulnerable situations.
Kennedy’s belief in the overmedication problem in the U.S. can be ultimately boiled down as an oversimplification, as explored in an NPR article published shortly after the summit. The president of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Theresa Miskimen Rivera, comments on MAHA’s initiatives, exploring how “it really ignores the larger reality, which is that too many patients really cannot access timely, comprehensive care that is much needed for our nation.”
However, Kennedy’s more problematic feelings towards antidepressants, specifically in relation to Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, have been revealed through some of his previous comments made in relation to mental illness. For one, Kennedy has stated that he believes antidepressant drugs can be just as addictive as heroin — a comment that can be very easily dismissed by scientific research. Instead of using verified facts, he referenced his own experience with heroin and that of his family members to demonize medication, which has been proven to better the lives and mental wellbeing of many individuals.
But even more problematically, Kennedy has attempted to correlate antidepressants to school shootings and increased violence. Following the shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis in August 2025, Kennedy stated, “We’re launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.” Despite its baseless nature and subsequent backlash, he claims the HHS is trying to pinpoint the cause of the U.S.’ prevalence of mass shootings in comparison to that of other countries to find the outliers.
In reality, antidepressants and antipsychotics are prominent in countless other countries and still are not facing the same high statistics in gun-related violence. In response to Kennedy’s ramblings, Dr. Keith Humphrey, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University succinctly vocalized, “What is unique about the United States is easy access to firearms.”
By telling the U.S. populace, 11.4% of whom take antidepressants as of 2023, that they are seen as a liability with the capacity to commit great brutality — with zero empirical evidence — it stigmatizes an entire group of individuals and their struggles.
Many other individuals have chimed in against Kennedy’s unsupported and dangerous associations between SSRIs and violence. Dr. Rebecca Brendel, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and member of the APA, notably articulated that “conflating violence with mental illness or particular treatment for mental illness is not supported by the data and has a very, very grave risk of setting us backwards in terms of those with mental illness having access to the evidence-based care they need.” If Kennedy truly cared about bettering the mental health field, he would exhibit much more empathy and tact when discussing the complexity of those who are on medication for psychological disorders.
In a letter to Kennedy cosigned by various U.S. members of Congress and senators, the impact of his words and the insensitivity of his claims are eloquently criticized. It reads, “By falsely equating psychotropic drugs with school shootings and falsely comparing SSRIs to heroin, you are reinforcing harmful stereotypes and perpetuating negative stigma aimed at those with a mental health issue or mental illness, and your words are especially impactful as Secretary of Health and Human Services.” No progress can be made if those with mental health issues are persecuted and diminished at the hands of a man who has too much influence and no actual education or training in medicine and public health.
Additionally, the aforementioned letter expertly summed up the effect Kennedy has had on the stigmatization of mental health, opening with: “These statements further stigmatize the mental and behavioral health challenges that one in five Americans live with, and can have a chilling effect on Americans seeking scientifically sound, medically necessary, and appropriate care.”
It’s in no way a secret that medicine is never one size fits all. Mental health medication and SSRIs are not going to be the solution for everyone but that does not negate their necessity. While some individuals may not experience adequate benefits from specific SSRIs or will face negative side effects, “many people experience improvement in their mental health symptoms that affect their happiness, daily functioning, work and academic performance, confidence, relationships and desire to live,” as outlined by Brendel. The purpose and benefits of a certified safe and effective treatment for mental illness as decreed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should never be discredited in this discussion.
An initiative purely focused on quickly weaning individuals off of medication becomes more of a display of power than concern for the health of the public. Kennedy can say that he wishes to focus on more holistic and informed paths to care but he still needs to be held accountable for the generalizations and stigmas he’s spreading across the nation. Not to mention that he is working under and vehemently supporting a presidential administration which has backed federal cuts to behavioral health, targeting both mental and addiction care.
In the press release run by the HHS, Kennedy’s proposed initiative explains: “Through a multipronged approach including education and outreach, program and policy actions, and research-to-practice efforts, HHS is working to prevent the unnecessary initiation of psychiatric medications and support the tapering and discontinuation for patients not experiencing clinical benefit.” If the emphasis on largely vilifying SSRIs is removed from the equation, distilled in these ideas are positive calls for progress.
In such a divisive and tumultuous political and societal landscape, Kennedy’s focus should be on providing more equitable and comprehensive mental and medical healthcare. But these areas need not be stigmatized in the process. With his position, Kennedy has the ability to incite real change — he should be cognizant of how and why changes so desperately need to be made to the current system and look beyond his own lens.