RFK Jr. and MAHA Send Psychiatrists into a Panic Attack

It is no secret that RFK Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, doesn’t like psychiatrists, and he has had good reason, based upon his personal life experiences. For example, his aunt, Rosemary Kennedy, was treated with a prefrontal lobotomy at age 23 in 1941, a dark chapter in the history of psychiatry that left her institutionalized for life. He credits his own recovery from addiction to abstinence-based 12-step programs, focusing on spiritual principles and peer support, rather than on psychiatrists or medication.

So, it is no surprise that he is drawn to curtailing psychiatrists’ powers. And he has begun to do so, with the recent MAHA Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit. His first target for his “deprescribing” initiative is SSRI antidepressants. RFK Jr.’s heart is in the right place, but he has no idea of the hornet’s nest he’s walking into because he was not on the front lines of psychiatry for decades, as I have been. The American Psychiatric Association is already fighting back, and a look at the historical context explains why.

To understand this brewing conflict, one has to first look at what happened to psychiatrists to turn them into over-prescribers in the first place. As a psychiatrist often featured in the media, I, too, have taken every opportunity to rail at the current mental health establishment, and psychiatrists in particular, for overprescribing. So, I agree with RFK Jr.’s efforts to change the status quo. However, it is important to first understand the history of how the American mental health establishment became as dysfunctional as it is today.

RFK Jr. will soon realize that taking prescription pads out of the hands of psychiatrists is a lot tougher than taking COVID-19 vaccines out of the hands of Big Pharma. First of all, Big Pharma still has many vaccines, pills, and potions to make money off of, whereas psychiatrists separate themselves from other mental health professionals by the authority to write prescriptions that their MD license confers.