Robert F. Kennedy Jr., testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing as President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services on Jan. 29, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
I am worried.
Rhode Island is in a vulnerable spot when it comes to mental health. For more than a decade, the state has has lost an average of more than 100 residents per year to suicide. In 2020, the director of the Mental Health Association of Rhode Island warned of “gaping holes in Rhode Island’s continuum of care, through which people are slipping and getting stuck.” More recently, the Rhode Island Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry declared a state of emergency for local young folks’ mental health. Our state would face challenges with even the most responsible federal leadership.
And so I felt a particular spike of dread when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and other sub-agencies.
Some of this is simply because I care about science and public health, and RFK has a long and egregious record of promoting misinformation. He blamed exposure to certain chemicals for gender dysphoria, stated that the COVID pandemic spared certain ethnic or religious groups, maligned the safety of COVID vaccines (and made ghastly comparisons of pandemic public health measures to the Holocaust), denied a link between HIV virus and AIDS, and falsely blamed childhood vaccines for autism. (The New York Times has collected these statements in a handy listicle, “7 Noteworthy Falsehoods Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Promoted”.) To put this man at the helm of an agency with a trillion-dollar budget and a mission of “enhanc[ing] the health and well-being of all Americans” is a grievous error that’s likely to cause harm and unnecessary death. If this sounds hyperbolic, read about RFK’s exploits in Samoa, where he supported anti-vaccine efforts amidst a deadly measles outbreak.
When it comes to mental health, Kennedy has spread more dangerous misinformation. He has blamed antidepressants for school shootings, despite the fact that, to quote one Columbia University expert, “SSRIs, and psych meds in general, are not responsible for mass shootings or violence in any way.” He has also – falsely – suggested that antidepressants are more addictive than heroin. Keith Humphreys, a Stanford-based addiction expert, told NPR, “Antidepressants and heroin are in different universes when it comes to addiction risk,” while the Cleveland Clinic states, “You can’t become physiologically dependent on antidepressants like you can on other substances, such as opioids, alcohol or nicotine.”
Following his confirmation as HHS Secretary, the White House issued an executive order creating a “Make America Healthy Again” commission, chaired by Kennedy, to examine, among other things, “the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs]” and other psychiatric medications. This wording misleadingly suggests that these medications are what pose a “threat” to public health, rather than untreated mental illness.
These statements are, like so much of what Kennedy says about public health, unfounded and dangerous. While SSRIs — the widely prescribed antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft to which Kennedy was referring — have some risks, the Mayo Clinic calls them “generally safe for most people.” By falsely vilifying them, Kennedy has made people in Rhode Island and across the country less likely to seek these medications. His comments about shootings have also contributed to the harmful stigma that people with mental illness are more likely to be violent when research shows they are more likely to be victims of violence.
To be clear, my alarm at Kennedy’s statements isn’t just from my work as a journalist who covers mental health. It’s also personal. I have a long history of anxiety and depression, but I’m pleased to say these issues are now well under control. For this, I credit years of therapy, as well as a daily dose of 50 milligrams of sertraline, the generic version of the SSRI Zoloft. SSRIs can have side effects, but for me, they have been negligible, while the benefits have been life-changing. My anxiety, which had previously been a daily sparring partner, has subsided considerably. My depression has disappeared almost entirely. In the five years I’ve been on SSRIs, I’ve felt a sense of mental stability and control that I never previously knew.
By falsely vilifying (SSRIs), Kennedy has made people in Rhode Island and across the country less likely to seek these medications.
This makes me one of the millions of Americans, and surely thousands of Rhode Islanders, who benefit from these medications. To hear a man who is now one of our nation’s top health officials (despite having no medical training) spread harmful myths about a medication I take was galling. The fact that he did so in the proclaimed spirit of making me and others “healthy again” was infuriating. My choice to start taking antidepressants was one of the most health-improving decisions in my life.
In a perfect world, RFK would retract his previous statements about SSRIs and clarify that the medications are not found to cause mass shootings. (In fact, one study indicates they have helped to save thousands of lives.) He would assure people that time-tested, factory-produced, government-regulated antidepressants share little in common with dangerous, unregulated street drugs like heroin. He would point Americans to trustworthy information about mental health from places like Johns Hopkins or the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which takes specific aim at stigma in its advocacy.
In the absence of such a retraction, I urge groups like the American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics to break their silence and stand up for patients and established science. I ask elected officials to follow the lead of Minnesota’s U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, who has been admirably outspoken – both in hearings and on social media – about the stakes of RFK’s harmful rhetoric about mental health. It also doesn’t seem premature to ask officials if they have plans for potential attempts by RFK’s HHS to restrict, or outright ban, these medications he has demonized.
Finally, I implore anyone reading this: Please don’t take advice from our new Secretary of Health and Human Services about your mental health. Listen instead to your primary-care physician or a trained mental health professional about the best course of treatment.
The fact that it’s necessary to issue such a warning reflects just how much trouble we face.
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