RFK Jr. Exploring How to Ban Popular Antidepressants
Americans could soon lose access to some widely used antidepressant medications.
As Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prepares to wean the country off mental health medications, U.S. Health Department officials explored last week whether the department had the ability to ban certain treatments within a class known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, better known as SSRIs, Reuters reported Friday.
That class of drugs includes Zoloft, Prozac, and Lexapro, which have been approved for public use for decades. People familiar with the conversations did not reveal to Reuters which drugs the Trump administration is in talks to restrict.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon denied the report, declaring in a statement that Kennedy’s department “has not had any discussions about banning SSRIs, and any claims suggesting otherwise are false.”
Yet the writing is on the wall. Kennedy blamed the country’s mental health crisis on medication earlier this week, announcing at a daylong mental health summit that America is suffering from a “dependency crisis driven by overmedicalization” of mental health and wellness. Kennedy also unveiled new policies that he said would rein in the prescription of the widely used drugs, though he explained that while he intends to steer America’s health institutions away from prescribing psychiatric medications, those currently on them should not stop doing so.
Kennedy has railed against the use of mental health medication for years, even going so far as to spread falsehoods that antidepressants and other medications are the real underlying reason for school shootings and mass murder (as opposed to a lack of adequate gun control).
A 2026 study published in the medical journal BMJ Mental Health found that roughly one in six U.S. adults are currently taking antidepressant medications—an uptick from previous decades. Between 2005 and 2008, just 11 percent of people above the age of 12 were using the mood stabilizers, according to CDC data.
The American Psychiatric Association lists SSRIs as the first option for depression as an evidence-based treatment.
“There are a lot of prescriptions because there are a lot of folks with illnesses that can respond to these medications,” including depression and several anxiety disorders, Dr. J. John Mann of the New York State Psychiatric Institute told Reuters. “Restricting use of these medications is not justifiable medically.”
