There are many reasons to keep people with personal agendas out of a public office in which to carry out said agenda when it conflicts with national interests, but when the issues come down to what medication a person takes, particularly someone battling with mental illness, the stakes rocket up because that personal agenda may become the national agenda and end up hurting people which then hurts more… a positive feedback loop. Robert Kennedy Jr. comes to office as Secretary of Health and Human Services with a personal agenda that now threatens the nation. While there is no question that Big Pharma is a national concern, especially the dollars sucked out of our citizens, that doesn’t equate to a conclusion that each medicine put forth by Big Pharma is dangerous, or even useless. Indeed, we are the United States of America because no one does science like us and mental illness is nothing more than healthcare – and our medicines can work miracles. When they do, they should be left alone, but that’s not Kennedy’s agenda.
Kennedy’s views regarding vaccines are all too well known, but he has similarly uninformed and paranoid beliefs regarding certain classes of anti-depressants, specifically the SSRIs (Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor). These medications are not for everyone. They are not a panacea. They have side effects. They are expensive. But they have saved hundreds of thousands to millions of lives and to the people who need them, these are miracle cures. But Kennedy appears to be coming for them as Mother Jones reports:
RFK Jr. Is Already Taking Aim at AntidepressantsThe new HHS secretary has made baseless claims that the drugs are addictive and cause violent behavior. www.motherjones.com/politics/202…
— Lauren Ashley Davis (@laurenmeidasa.bsky.social) 2025-02-15T01:47:54.441Z
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has issued a statement that laid out sweeping plans for his first 100 days in office. Chief among his goals, he wrote, was to combat what he called a “growing health crisis” of chronic disease. The government, he said, would “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, [and] mood stabilizers.”
Well, study away but please don’t act like there’s been a major change of late. There may well be reasons to take close hard looks at each of these medications but those reviews should not come from someone who has already made his mind up about their use and made findings that the medications are more dangerous available than unavailable. It is easy for Kennedy to focus solely on the side effects of such meds when he doesn’t have to face a dark future in which they are unavailable to treat his condition (Like some others might find themselves). Kennedy seems to believe that this issue has been so thoroughly researched that the conclusions are preordained.
In a 2023 livestream on X with Elon Musk, he claimed that “tremendous circumstantial evidence” suggested that people taking antidepressants were more likely to commit school shootings. (Actually, most school shooters were not taking those drugs, evidence shows.) Kennedy has also called people who take SSRIs addicts—and then tried to claim he didn’t during his confirmation hearings.
Oh, good idea. Shame the people who have already fought against society’s views of mental illness and accepted treatment of their depression, great – that’s the way to improve public health. As JoeMyGod writes:
Kennedy last year proposed creating “wellness farms” to help people “get off psychiatric drugs, get off SSRIs.” Patients living on these farms could grow their own organic food because depression, he claims, is “food-related.”
I am sure that depression is food-related. It is just that I think it’s probably more related to other things like “money” than factors such as food – to be addressed at… This is not a serious man. Does he really believe this stuff? Or is he the one who is now mentally ill? Because it sure sounds like someone who read some very mature criticism of big pharma, the incessant focus on daily medication regimens, the overuse (NOT misuse, but over use) of anti-depressants in people who don’t need them, the money at stake, and then took all of that and ran with it such that he is now suffering from a comprehensive paranoia regarding the entire system. He can no longer see any of the substantial good that is to be had given our body of research into mental health.
And that puts it all at risk. There is an open question as to whether Kennedy is even well enough to see that his personal crusade is not only wrong (Well, he cannot “see” that), but that it “could be” wrong and could also have devastating consequences when compared to the alternative, which is nothing more than, “Leave it alone.”
Hard to believe that Kennedy has found a way to make “Leave it alone,” even the Ponzi scheme that is big pharma, the safest and best approach. But he did… Leave it the f*** alone until the grown-ups get back. Don’t touch anything.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and on X at @JasonMiciak and now on Bluesky
There goes the suicide/homicide rate…up up up and AWAY WE GO! After all, let’s stop and remember our mass murdering brothers…they like to take people of all ages with them when they go. Then there’s the family killers, mostly men, who can’t face a breakup, and decide to wipe the slate clean, including their children of all ages. We’ll never know how many suicides used their cars instead, or decided risking an overdose of street opiates was one option…playing Russian roulette with one’s body. Finally, we just get to those who go it alone. Like my housemate, Julie. She got up one morning , went over to her parent’s house, and hung herself in the basement. Her fiancee found her. I was next in line. No matter how corny Capra could seem at times, his angel, Clarence, in, Its A Wonderful Life, described it perfectly to George, when he pointed out each of our lives touch so many other lives, that, when we’re not here, it leaves a terrible hole. Not that Mr. Kennedy cares.
30 years down the road and still taking an SSNRI. Forgetting a dose is horrible. Making it hard to get it? Like @scottsamueljackson wrote – there goes the suicide/homicide rate. How many items of living are going to be curtailed, changed or corrupted for all the common man in the U.S.?
I have been on Elavil since 1992. I have night terrors. Not nightmares, night terrors. I would wake up.at least once a night screaming or crying. No.memory of it. When asked about my sllep.patterns, my husband told the doctor about. Turns out I didn’t have depression, I was simply exhausted.
Without the proper dosage, I don’t sleep. Lately I have been sleeping 6-8 hours every 48. NOT GOOD. For some reason the dose was lowrred, likely by the neurologist I dealt with when I was hospitalized in August for a UTI. *3* normal MRIs apparently pissed him.off and he couldn’t persuade my husband to.put me in a nursing home, he reduced the dosage and I have been fighting with doctors to restore it.
F RFK. He is a former addict with zilch medical.training; a CNA with a high school diploma knows more than he does.