RFK Jr. plans to ban antidepressants, which they falsely compare to heroin

In a brief appearance at the Make America Healthy Again Institute event on Monday, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new federal measures to end anti-depressants, which he has long argued are false and dangerous. Psychologists have previously criticized his rhetoric and are already pushing back against his new efforts.

The MAHA event focused on “overmedicalization,” with participants arguing—without evidence—that many Americans, especially young people, are addicted to drugs that are prescribed in the class of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. This class includes drugs such as Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, and Lexapro, which are used to treat depression, anxiety, and mood disorders, among others. Participants in the event focused on the claims that the drug is given without a license, is dangerous, and can be difficult to stop taking.

False claims

These themes are closely related to what Kennedy said. Among his alarming statements, without evidence, he said that many people, including children, are put on SSRIs and make people violent. He also said that they are responsible mass shootingsincluding school shootings. In a podcast last year, he infamously said that “Every black kid is now on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, known to cause violence..” The answer is for black children to be “to renovate” and work in the fields.

Kennedy has also repeatedly falsely claimed that quitting antidepressants is very difficult, harder to quit than heroin. But experts have disputed this claim—there is no research to support the idea. After Kennedy repeated his confirmation speech in January 2025, Keith Humphreys, who studies addiction at Stanford University, emphasized to NPR that antidepressants and heroin “are in different countries in terms of the risk of addiction.”