RFK Jr. Pushes to Curb Overprescribing of Psychiatric Drugs

RFK Jr.’s fight against SSRI antidepressants

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced efforts to curb psychiatric overprescribing at a MAHA Institute Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit.

Kennedy, who has no medical degree, laid out a new action plan to limit psychiatric prescribing and drive “deprescribing” when clinically indicated.

“Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation’s mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications – especially among children,” Kennedy said in an HHS press release.“We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making, and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency, and a more holistic approach to mental health.”

In particular, Kennedy wants to curb the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, which he says are unusually difficult to quit. 

“Let me be clear: If you are taking psychiatric medication, we are not telling you to stop,” Kennedy said – which is a good thing, since an immediate withdrawal from SSRIs can lead to severe withdrawal symptoms. “We are making sure you – and your clinician – have the information and support to make the right decision for you.” 

Kennedy also released a “Dear Colleague” letter urging providers “to expand the use of nonpharmacologic treatments and to strengthen informed consent and shared decision-making.”

The letter says that while medications can play an important role, they “should not be understood as the only treatment option” and recommends psychotherapy, exercise, social connection, physical activity, diet and nutrition, among other interventions.

Marketa Wills, CEO and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, told the New York Times that the APA “may take issue“ with Kennedy’s overprescribing hypothesis.

“There is probably overprescribing and underprescribing in all parts of medicine, and mental health care is no different,” she said. “And there are people who still can’t access care at all who need it.”

One of Kennedy’s ideas for helping treat psychiatric drug problems (as well as addiction) in kids, is to send them to work or farm camps.

While running for president in 2024, he made a widely condemned suggestion that black children could be “reparented” on wellness farms – an idea that Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat from Maryland, criticized last week in a fiery Senate hearing.

“I would have to see, hear the recording because I have no memory of saying anything like that,” Kennedy testified. He later added: “If I said it, I apologize.” 

Kennedy has also falsely claimed that SSRIs are more addictive than heroin and are linked to school shootings. He repeated this idea at Monday’s event, saying that he was addicted to heroin for 14 years and went through withdrawal more than 100 times.

“I was constantly getting off it, and then came back on,” he said. “You just have to steel yourself for 72 bad hours.” 

Tami Benton, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, took issue with the comparison.

“These medications are not addictive and they’re not at all like heroin,” Benton told The Hill. 

 –Diana Hembree and Rob Waters

‘The government is lying.’ Immigrants held at Michigan ICE detention center launch hunger strike to protest ‘deplorable conditions’

Detainees at North Lake Processing Center, an 1,800-bed immigration detention facility in Baldwin, Michigan owned and operated by private prison firm GEO Group, launched a hunger strike on Monday, April 20 to protest dire living conditions and indefinite detention without bond, MLive has reported.

After a brief pause, the strike expanded on April 25 to include a refusal to work in protest of inadequate medical care.

The family of 56-year-old Nenko Gantchev, a Bulgarian man from Chicago, asserts that medical neglect contributed to his death at the facility in December. (A medical examiner ruled that Gantchev died of natural causes.)  Gantchev’s passing was among 33 reported deaths to occur in Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency custody last year—the highest in more than 20 years. Seventeen people are reported to have already died in ICE custody this year. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security initially denied a strike was underway, but one immigrant recently released from North Lake said, plainly, that “the government is lying.”

Using the pseudonym Juan for his protection, the man told No Detention Centers in Michigan: “Conditions at the prison are truly deplorable. If you are in pain, they don’t care about your symptoms, they just tell you to take Tylenol and that’s it. And there are people who are suffering from many different illnesses with no treatment whatsoever.”

In response, a spokesperson with Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency provides excellent “medical, mental and dental care” for detainees, calling it “the best healthcare many aliens have received in their entire lives. All ICE detention facilities operate in strict accordance with all applicable federal detention standards for safety, sanitation and humane treatment in accordance with national detention standards.”

The strike is also in protest of widespread bond denial, which advocates say has become a tool of indefinite punishment and can leave people in ICE detention while their case moves through the legal system.

ProPublica has reported thattens of thousands of detainees have challenged their detention in federal court — and federal judges largely agree they are being held illegally, ordering bond hearings.

But lawyers say immigration judges, who function under the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice, have been summarily denying bonds, even for people with no criminal record. In fact, about 85% of current detainees at North Lake have never been convicted of a crime. 

Miriam Aukerman of the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union said that immigration judges may be facing an “extremely alarming” dynamic in which they are “forced to choose between upholding their duty to review the evidence and follow the law or face termination.”

Reports have emerged that immigration judges, who are under the control of the executive branch, are being fired for failing to conform to President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.

For detainees, the psychological weight of open-ended detention, with no clear legal path forward and no assurance of basic care, is itself a form of harm, further compounding the suffering caused by the inhumane physical conditions at North Lake. The ACLU of Michigan and the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center have called for an independent investigation into North Lake, including a medical audit and an oversight visit from members of Congress.

Six Democratic Michigan lawmakers – U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell, Kristen McDonald Rivet, Rashida Tlaib, Hillary Scholten, Shri Thanedarh and Haley Stevens – sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week demanding answers. 

“We are troubled that the repeated reports from detainees and their advocates stand in such stark contrast to the statements from ICE,” the letter said.

Rep. Stevens went on to say that she’s seen the disconnect firsthand, after being required to provide advanced notice to ICE about her planned visit so they might prepare a “sanitized visit”.

“That lack of transparency is unacceptable,” she said. “No one should be subjected to prolonged detention without basic care and dignity, and the hunger strike underscores the urgency of these concerns.”

As the strike continues, more than 130 faith interfaith leaders across Michigan began a weeklong fast on April 28th in solidarity with North Lake detainees, amplifying their demands for adequate food, proper medical care and transparency.

“For people of faith to discuss and frame the experience of these detainees in moral, ethical, religious, spiritual terms, I think helps people connect with what their faith looks like expressed in daily life,” said Rev. Sarah Lynne Gershon of Ypsilanti’s Journey of Faith Christian Church.

The hunger strike is also a good reminder that, in the absence of government accountability, the power for change remains with ordinary people.

–Courtney Wise

A condition that makes sober people drunk without drinking

Since the early 2000s, Mark Mongiardo of Sullivan County, New York, had had a string of problems involving alcohol on his breath and intoxication, culminating with two citations for drunken driving within two years.

His family was uneasy, too: At one Christmas dinner, Mongiardo had had trouble finishing a sentence or even holding his fork. “There was no alcohol being served, and suddenly Mark’s drunk,” he said. “My own parents were telling my wife she should leave me.” 

The incidents upended his reputation, his job as a coach and athletic director and ultimately his relationship with his family. From the point of view of everyone around him, it looked like he had a dangerous drinking problem.

The only catch: Mongiardo wasn’t drinking.

When he was arrested for a second DWI incident, a year had passed since he consumed any alcohol at all, the New York Times reported. A family member suggested he see a gastroenterologist who had solved dozens of similarly inexplicable cases.

It turns out that Mongiardo had an exceedingly rare and little-known medical problem: Auto-brewery syndrome, which the Times called “a mystifying syndrome that makes people spontaneously drunk.”

When he learned of the diagnosis, Mongiardo was overwhelmed by relief.  “I just started hysterically crying,” he said. 

The physician who diagnosed him was Dr. Prasanna C. Wickremesinghe, a gastroenterologist at Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island (often referred to as “Dr. Wick”). Like some other experts on the syndrome, he thinks it could be tied to the use of antibiotics, which can disrupt the gut microbiome.

Another leading expert on the syndrome, Dr. Bernd Schnabl, told the Times that during digestion, microbes in our gut convert carbs and sugars into ethanol, a type of alcohol.

Usually those amounts are tiny and quickly metabolized. In patients with Auto-brewery syndrome, the gut microbes work too much, dramatically ramping up ethanol production, explained Schnabl, who is co-director of the San Diego Digestive Diseases Research Center at U.C. San Diego.

And when ethanol levels rise above what the liver can handle, people get drunk, just as if they were consuming too much alcohol.

Although Mongiardo had suffered deeply – losing his job as an athletic director and being forced to sell his house – his story took a better turn after the discovery of his syndrome. Under medical supervision, changes in his diet and antifungal medicine brought his Auto-brewery syndrome under control. He moved to Florida in 2020 and started working for a retail chain; his wife and children joined him two years later.

In late 2025, he started a TikTok channel – now 10,000 followers strong – to bring attention to the condition. 

“I want everyone, and every doctor, to see it as a real disorder,” he said. “How many times did I get in my car and drive to work? How many times did I have my kids in the car? It’s scary to think, over the years, how many times I could have been intoxicated and didn’t know it.”  

(Read the entire Times piece, by Nova Foundation media fellow Kate Morgan, here.)

In other news…

On Mother’s Day, moms who have lost loved ones to overdose will call for treatment, not punishment – and they held an online press conference on Wednesday, May 6th.

In 2024, nearly 80,000 people died as a result of the overdose crisis in the United States, and the U.S. continues to lead the world in locking up people for drug-related offenses. But many grieving families who’ve lost their children to drugs don’twant harsh sentences for people who sell drugs or those who take them. They don’t want more punitive drug laws. And they don’t want the death penalty for people who sell or share drugs that cause a fatal overdose. 

What these family members want is for lawmakers to decriminalize drugs and expand access to overdose prevention and addiction treatment services – including needle exchanges and overdose reversal medications like naloxone. And some have organized a group called Broken No More, made up of families and friends of people with substance use disorders.

“As a mother who lost her 16-year-old son to overdose, I strongly oppose imposing long prison sentences and harsher penalties for those involved in drug-related deaths,” says Dr. Tamara Olt, the group’s executive director. “It is enough that one family has been devastated by the loss of their loved one. It is cruel and unjust for a second family to lose their child to incarceration and the laws will increase deaths by making people afraid to get help for someone experiencing an overdose. I support a health-based approach and harm reduction to cease the senseless and preventable overdose deaths. No one is disposable.”