MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced new initiatives to wean Americans off of commonly used antidepressant medications, medications like Prozac and Zoloft. Kennedy made the announcements at a daylong summit held yesterday by the Make America Healthy Again Institute. NPR health correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee watched the summit. She is here to tell us all. Hey there, Rhitu.
RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: OK, so I do want to circle back in a second and hear about these new initiatives. But first, just tell us - where is this focus on antidepressants coming from?
CHATTERJEE: Yeah, you know, Kennedy has long claimed that these medications are overprescribed and that they are harming Americans with these serious side effects. And he's also in the past claimed, without any evidence, I should add, that these meds cause gun violence. Here's Kennedy speaking at the summit yesterday.
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: Too many patients begin treatment without a clear understanding of the risks and how long they will stay on these drugs or how to come off of them.
CHATTERJEE: And, you know, the summit was focused on highlighting the harms of psychiatric medications. People speaking before Kennedy talked about being on some of these meds for years, some of them starting in childhood or teenage, and not just on antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft, which belong to a group of drugs called SSRIs. Some of them were also on antipsychotic medications, ADHD medications like Adderall, and some of them on a combination of these drugs. And they described lasting side effects like feeling emotionally numb, having sexual dysfunction, feeling suicidal. And they said that their providers had either discouraged them from getting off of the drugs or did not guide them on how to wean safely, and that was the premise of those announcements from Kennedy.
KELLY: OK, so this argument from Kennedy that we shouldn't have so many people on antidepressants for so long - what does the evidence say to that?
CHATTERJEE: So, you know, the side effects can be serious for many people, and experts agree on that. But they also say that many, many people still benefit from taking SSRIs. Dr. Vera Feuer is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and chief clinical officer at the nonprofit Child Mind Institute in New York, and she says that many of her patients were kids, and their families have thanked her for prescribing an antidepressant.
VERA FEUER: And I've had parents hug me, you know, on the street. Thank you for convincing me for putting my child - I feel like I have my child back. They're, like, thriving. They're doing well.
CHATTERJEE: And, you know, she does add that only a minority, about 8- to 10% of kids who have a mental health condition, need medication. For the rest, you know, talk therapy is enough, which I should add can be really hard to access for a variety of reasons. However, Vera Feuer also said that people who do want to come off the meds should be supported and guided to do that with a careful weaning process, and Kennedy is trying to support that.
KELLY: So what are these new initiatives - let's circle back to those - to help people gradually come off antidepressants?
CHATTERJEE: Yeah. So Kennedy said the federal Health Department will roll out trainings and clinical guidelines for providers to guide them on how to help patients taper from the drugs safely. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services will expand access to alternative forms of treatment like talk therapy, and the Health Department also published a Dear Colleague Letter to providers acknowledging that meds can play a role. But when they are prescribing meds, they said, you know, talk over the risks carefully and engage patients in decision-making.
KELLY: And just briefly, how are mental healthcare providers reacting?
CHATTERJEE: You know, they're - support of (ph) any efforts to improve training on prescribing and weaning people off, but they disagree that this mental health crisis that the U.S. is facing is a problem of over-medicalization and overprescribing.
KELLY: That is NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee. Thank you very much.
CHATTERJEE: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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