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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently sworn in as the 26th Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. After gaining his newfound power, Kennedy radically proposed the elimination of life-saving vaccines and drug therapies.

On Feb. 13, 2025, the White House released an executive order announcing the “Make America Healthy Again” commission. The order outlined President Donald Trump’s extreme goals of readdressing policies for child healthcare and eliminating the claimed “dire threat” that inclusive healthcare legislature allows space for.

The specific demand within this order that should concern students at Syracuse University is the reassessment of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor prescriptions, used to treat patients struggling with various mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.

Kennedy has historically opposed mandatory vaccines and has made public statements incorrectly claiming vaccines lead to autism. In a 2023 X livestream, he openly expressed his distaste for SSRIs alongside Elon Musk and posited a link between antidepressants and school shootings. In reality, there’s no scientific evidence proving an association between the two.

Not only has Kennedy said people who take antidepressants are “addicts,” he aims to create “wellness farms” for people to stop drug use and reconnect with their communities. His attitude toward mental illness is clearly inappropriate, but his suggestions of communal health centers suggest a far more problematic and offensive sentiment.

Attempting to rid society of the matter entirely resorts healthcare back to an outdated and ineffective state. This has been a considerable disappointment to the 13% of American adults who continue to find significant mental relief through prescribed medication.

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This condemning narrative heightens the stigma associated with Generation Z’s mental health crisis and enforces the notion that people affected by mental illness not only have something wrong with them but should be sent away.

This is far from the rhetoric American leaders should manifest at a tenuous time like this. The majority of people using SSRIs and other drug therapies rely on the medications to counteract the chemical imbalance causing depression, which is entirely out of their control.

I spoke with one SU sophomore about how strict restrictions on or the removal of these drugs altogether would be detrimental to her daily life.

“I find it disheartening and frightening that the current administration could potentially take these life-saving medications away from Americans. In treating my anxiety disorder, an SSRI allows me to function to the best ability as a student, friend and person,” the student, who wished to remain anonymous for medical privacy reasons, said.

Antidepressants have been widely used since the 1980s and pose very minimal risk for addiction, if any. Kennedy asserts antidepressants are just as addictive as opioids like heroin. This claim is complete misinformation, not to mention an unacceptable and dangerous stance to be taken by America’s top health official.

Emphasizing the baselessness of his public opinion on addiction, antidepressants and opioids aren’t in the same drug family at all and represent a vastly different concept of dependence. Such a gaping misunderstanding of these drugs’ fundamental differences is quite concerning, especially considering Kennedy’s own extensive experience with drug abuse.

The mental health crisis has exploded in the past five years. The global presence of both anxiety and depression increased by 25% during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, according to the World Health Organization.

It’s clear the need for antidepressants is on the rise. Though many find relief through talk therapy, those who rely on full psychotherapy are at risk of losing their trusted safety nets at the hand of this order.

The void that’ll be left in place if SSRIs and other mental disorder medications are removed can’t be taken lightly. This would lead to a national disaster in depression symptom management and illustrates the federal government’s blatant disregard for citizens’ emotional well-being.

This unnecessarily restrictive agenda of the Trump administration is coming to fruition right before our eyes, attacking yet another critical institution that manages American wellness. Our country elected a leader who appointed a health secretary who’s now working to make nationwide prescription reform with little to no scientific backing.

Untreated depressive disorder has a glaring lifetime suicide risk of 20%, emphasizing the importance of proper care and resources for those battling mental illness. If our government follows through on removing access to psychotherapy protocols, suicide rates will more than likely increase from their already remarkable pace.

Although this executive order focuses on children for now, there’s no guarantee it won’t soon extend to teenagers and adults. The potential long-term, generational impacts that worry and disturb the victims of this proposed legislation are frightening and will decay years of mental health progress, both in eradicating taboos and in actual symptom alleviation.

Layla Poli is a sophomore majoring in public relations. She can be reached at lcpoli@syr.edu.

Published on February 26, 2025 at 10:38 pm