RFK Jr. Goes After Widely Used Antidepressants, Claiming They Could Be A Threat To Americans

The language in Kennedy’s plans, launched Thursday in a White Home assertion titled “Establishing The President’s Make America Wholesome Once more Fee,” is obscure. It’s unclear how the brand new well being secretary would act concerning SSRIs and what avenues for limiting the medicine he could pursue. When Kennedy was operating for president, he proposed a plan to ship folks scuffling with dependancy to “wellness farms” in rural areas.

“I’m going to create these wellness farms the place they’ll go to get off of unlawful medication, off of opiates, but additionally unlawful medication, different psychiatric medication,” he stated, including, “in the event that they wish to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as a lot time as they want—three or 4 years in the event that they want it—to be taught to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.” (Kennedy later said these farms must be obtainable, however folks wouldn’t be compelled to attend.)

At his affirmation listening to, Kennedy—who has been open about being a heroin person for greater than a decade in his youth—likened SSRIs to the drug, claiming that antidepressants will be much more addicting than heroin. “I do know folks, together with members of my household, who’ve had a a lot worse time getting off of SSRIs than they’ve getting off of heroin,” Kennedy stated within the listening to.

Prozac. Lively Precept Fluoxetine. Therapeutic Class Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, often known as SSRIs

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“Antidepressants and heroin are in numerous universes with regards to dependancy danger,” Keith Humphreys, who research dependancy at Stanford College, advised NPR in an article debunking Kennedy’s claims. “In my 35 years within the dependancy discipline, I’ve met solely two or three individuals who thought they have been hooked on antidepressants versus hundreds who have been hooked on heroin and different opioids.”

Throughout his affirmation hearings, Kennedy was requested about his previous rebukes of SSRIs by Senator Tina Smith from Minnesota. Smith defined that, when she was youthful, she took SSRIs to help in her struggles with despair, including that they “helped to clear my thoughts, get me again on monitor to being a mother and a spouse and a productive, glad individual.”

“These statements that you just’ve made linking antidepressants to highschool shootings, they reinforce the stigma that individuals who expertise psychological well being on daily basis face each single day,” Smith advised Kennedy. “And I’m very involved that that is one other instance of your report of sharing false and deceptive info that really actually hurts folks.”

“Senator,” he responded, “you’re mischaracterizing my statements.” “I’m solely placing into the report what you’ve got stated, Mr. Kennedy,” Smith retorted.