RFK Jr. Blames Pills--Not Guns--for School Shootings [View all]

[douglas9]

As secretary of Health and Human Services in the second Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pushed an array of pseudo-science and misinformation, foremost about vaccines. His approach has been to promote claims that are unsupported by evidence or have been disproven by scientific research, and to announce that HHS is pouring resources into studying those baseless claims. He also tends to imply that questions he raises have not yet been studied, when in fact they have been. Research has shown definitively, for example, that vaccines do not cause autism, despite Kennedy’s long-running efforts to stir that fear.

In similar fashion, Kennedy is now using his post as the highest-ranking US health official to spread the claim that psychiatric drugs are a key cause of mass shootings at the nation’s schools and beyond. The idea, essentially, is that antidepressants and other meds may inadvertently turn people into killers. There is no scientific evidence to support that theory—and extensive research indicates it is untrue. Nonetheless, Kennedy announced at a recent Turning Point USA event that “massive studies” of the theory are now underway at HHS. The HHS press secretary, however, declined to answer any of my specific questions about this purported research effort, and threat assessment and mental health leaders I spoke with voiced sharp skepticism.


https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/rfk-jr-mass-shootings-ssri-antidepressants/