The siren call was apparently irresistible. “Kennedy Starts a Push to Help Americans Quit Antidepressants,” read a New York Times headline from early May — phrasing that seemed to normalize Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-science, roadkill enthusiast who is currently running the Department of Health and Human Services, and to assume that he wants to help everyday Americans.
But reading the article should disabuse anyone of the notion that Kennedy has sincere, much less helpful, motivations in shepherding an event called the “Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit,” held by the MAHA Institute, a far-right group organized to wage war on responsible healthcare systems. “No major medical organizations were represented at the gathering,” Times reporter Ellen Barry noted, and it’s not a surprise why. Legitimate medical experts are, to put it mildly, skeptical of taking away mental health medications, especially when there’s no real pathway to effective alternatives for people struggling with depression, anxiety or other psychiatric conditions — or the one in six people who are taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to manage them.
