Posted on 02/26/2025 8:43:58 AM PST by Red Badger
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made psychiatric medications a focus of his review of the country’s childhood chronic disease crisis, claiming the drugs have been “insufficiently scrutinized” and are addictive.
Childhood psychiatrists insist the drugs, for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression, are nonaddictive and proven safe and say they are more concerned about young Americans unable to access psychiatric medications that could help.
Kennedy emphasized his skepticism of these medications during his Senate confirmation hearings.
“Fifteen percent of American youth are now on Adderall or some other ADHD medication. Even higher percentages are on SSRIs and benzos. We are not just overmedicating our children, we are overmedicating our entire population,” Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee.
The exact rate at which American youths are using ADHD medications is hard to ascertain. Kennedy may have been referring to the results of a Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey released in 2023 that found 15 percent of high school seniors reported using a stimulant or nonstimulant ADHD medication.
Kennedy told HHS staff in closed-door meeting last week about the plans for his Make America Healthy Again Commission.
“Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formally taboo or insufficiently scrutinized,” he said, adding, “nothing is going to be off limits.” Among the factors he named were the childhood vaccine schedule, psychiatric drugs and environmental issues such as microplastics.
The commission has 100 days to produce a report on “what is known and what questions remain regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, and include international comparisons.”
Kennedy has claimed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can be more addictive than heroin, of which he is a longtime recovering addict, and has falsely linked them to school shootings. He avoided denouncing this belief about shootings during his confirmation hearings, only saying, “I don’t think anybody can answer that question.”
According to psychiatrists who work with children, rhetoric like that of Kennedy’s does not help children with mental illnesses.
“Those statements, in my perspective, don’t address the reality of psychiatric treatment,” said Tami Benton, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as well as psychiatrist in chief for the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“These medications are not addictive and they’re not at all like heroin,” Benton told The Hill. “People use them for different reasons. … So no, they’re not as addictive as, you know, narcotics.”
As for the claim that U.S. children are being overmedicated, physicians and psychiatric experts who spoke with The Hill said they are more concerned that many children who could benefit from SSRIs or other such medications lack access to these drugs.
“There is some concern, even more so in the field, that many children with depression and mental health disorders do not get access to the mental health services that they need, and that includes the comprehensive treatment that we would recommend, which is beyond just SSRIs, but also therapy and other supports,” said Lisa Fortuna, a child psychiatrist and chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Children, Adolescents and Their Families.
Previous studies, such as a 2019 report published in the Pediatrics medical journal by the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that 70 percent of U.S. counties had no child psychiatrists between 2006 and 2017 despite a broader increase in the profession during that time frame.
The researchers noted that “more than half of the children in the United States with a treatable mental health disorder do not receive treatment from a mental health professional.”
Christine Crawford, psychiatrist and associate medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said the perception that more children are taking medications for mental illness or psychiatric disorders may be due to growing awareness of these conditions.
“We’re in 2025, and in this day and age, there’s a greater awareness of a variety of psychiatric illnesses that can impact kids. We have treatments that are quite effective that are available for kids, and I appreciate the fact that the stigma kind of related to having a kid on psychiatric medications has decreased over time,” Crawford said.
Psychiatrists say there are issues around children and psychiatric drugs that need to be addressed, such as including them more in medical research.
“We have very few psychiatric medications that are FDA-approved for the use in children,” Crawford noted, referring to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “The reason for that is that there aren’t enough studies that have been conducted, long-term studies, on a variety of different medications.”
“We only have a couple of medications — and this has been the case for years — that are technically FDA-approved, and so the majority of prescribing is done off-label when it comes to kids,” she added.
Should Kennedy seek to limit access to these medications, there are some avenues available to him in his new role.
Typically, drugs are removed from the market by manufacturers if a new, better drug is introduced into the market or the margins aren’t profitable. The FDA can also choose to withdraw approval if clinical evidence demonstrates that a drug is not safe or effective.
But Benton noted that SSRIs such as fluoxetine, better known as Prozac, have been around since the ’80s and have decades of evidence supporting their safety and efficacy. She noted there is another method through which federal authorities could theoretically decrease use of certain drugs, though: their labeling.
“When the black box warning was issued, it decreased the number of people who were actually using SSRIs. And the black box warning suggested that when initiating SSRIs, suicidality is a possible side effect,” Benton said. “The study that supported that warning turned out to not be well-supported.”
“These medications are supported by research. They’re supported by clinical process,” she added. “They really do help people when they’re applied and used in the right way.”
Just my opinion that in many cases the ADHD drugs are BS and in some cases quite dangerous.
Excellent.
Also, looking forward to RFKjr and his agency addressing fluoride in public water supplies. It violates informed consent. It is an uncontrolled dosage delivery system - too much for kids, and not needed at all for those with dentures/no teeth. Utah is banning it statewide now, with provisions for pharmacy sales of fluoride pills - which DOES align with informed consent.
“and has falsely linked them to school shootings.”
They can take their article and shove it.
ADHD drugs like Adderall aren’t the issue. If a kid misses his Adderall dose, they give them caffeine which mimics Adderall.
SSRI’s and benzos are the real issue. That’s why kid are shooting up schools.
Child misbehavior can only be corrected by pills. Hell No!
Children have to be forced to behave. They’ll learn the life lessons they’ll need.
HOORAY RFK Jr.!
They medicate active boys because they don’t want to expend the effort to deal with them. None of these kids are actually suffering from a hyperactive disorder. Have you ever seen a truly hyperactive child? I have. They are very different from a bored figidity kid. All these drugs should be reclassified, and there should be strict oversight of their use. These drugs lie at the very feet of school shootings, which never happened before this nonsense.
Don't look me in the eye when I speak...you're autistic...therapy will cure you.
The spectrums are stretched so far...normal is in the minority...and that simply can not be!!
Adderall is addictive, I can’t tell you how many divorces I have done where one of the parents is addicted.
Todd Rundgren once produced 3 albums in 15 months, one on which he played all instruments, and which produced 2 top 10 hits. He said he was able to do it with a combo of Ritalin and cannabis. He was 100% locked in the "zone" all day long. So hopefully RFK won't ban them. They just need to stop allowing fake ADHD diagnoses and MDs handing them out like candy, at crazy high doses. The dose I took was the lowest which I had cut in half.
Back in the day, 50 years ago, I got spankings and it straightened me out, for a while. As I got older, I learned to handle it. I still have issues reading something that does not interest me.
They medicate active boys because they don’t want to expend the effort to deal with them.
*****
Bingo, and the schools don’t have three recesses anymore like we did when we were kids.
While I agree, in principle, what he is trying to do, I have a very big problem with the government getting between me and my doctor...for any reason
I trust Kennedy on this one.
Have you ever seen a hyperactive adult? I am 71 and have known 2 in my life that I can recall.
Adderal and Vivance go for big bucks on the street. I watch family court cases a lot and when sent to drug test, many parents are on these drugs. They have a prescription, so are deemed clean. Legal junkies. Take away their scripts and they will find meth or heroin to replace it.
RFK Jr. is against drugging children good for him bad for Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex.
And great for our children and grandchildren do we want them to be drugged out of reality starting at an early age.
These probs are overdiagnosed.
This started in the early 90s when they forced insurance companies to pay for psychiatric care.
What soon followed was an explosion of ADHD and autism spectrum diagnoses, mostly from public school “health professionals”.
What soon followed after that were school shootings, beginning with Columbine. I think both of those guys were on ADHD drugs.
“Doctors dealing drugs that will never cure your ills”
Bob Dylan-”When You Gonna Wake Up”.
Actually I don’t think attacking the drug is warranted.
Attacking the corruption of “education” that pays to have more “disabled” children in its ranks is needed.
See how much quagmire there is? It’s not simply about 1 item. It’s about a tangled network of departments, etc.
Really, the gov needs to stop handing money for more kids who are diagnosed “ADD “ or anything else. The schools encourage this by recommending a child be evaluated and they hope for that Dx. Many psychs might be getting kick-backs from Ed to say kids are sick,
It’s an entire sick system.
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