Trump And RFK Jr. Are Coming For Your SSRIs, As If The Next Four Years Won't Be Miserable Enough
SSRIs save lives.
After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services (Lord help us all), the first thing Donald Trump did was to put out yet another executive order, this time “Establishing The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.”
Shockingly, it does not include anything about helping people get access to medical care, so much as it appears to actually discourage medical care and encourage suspicion of doctors and medicines, including those that have been proven safe and effective for decades.
Rather, they want to redirect the HHS’s focus to “fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.” The latter being slightly ironic given the fact that the food safety chief of the FDA literally just resigned because all of the firings made it impossible for him to do his job. But hey! There’s probably some random YouTube health vlogger who could do the job just fine, right?
While many of these things are just fine and dandy, they’re not a substitute for actual medical and mental health care. It’s also concerning that it very clearly comes from the Armchair Medical School of All You Need To Do Is To Eat Right, Get Some Fresh Air And Exercise And Get Off Your Dang Phone.
From now on, the HHS’s primary function will apparently be to provide deeply satisfying explanations and narratives for cranky internet trolls. People who want to be told that the reason why people in higher income countries like ours are more likely to be diagnosed with certain ailments is not because we are more likely to have access to doctors and are more able to obtain information about our own symptoms, but because of the things those doctors are prescribing to us or perhaps because of the chemtrails. People who want to be told that the increase in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnoses is because of vaccines, not because there is new diagnostic criteria for it and both lay people and professionals understand it better than they did a few years ago. People who want to be told that ADHD is not real, and all those kids need is to run around and tire themselves out (or be disciplined). People who definitely don’t want to hear that the increases in ADHD and ASD diagnoses could have anything to do with the fact that we’re just now starting to learn about how those disorders manifest themselves in women and girls, because every study for years was just on how they affected boys. (Because diversity is unnecessary, even in medical trials!) People who want to be told that overweight people are just lazy and unable to say no to junk food. People who, more than anything, just desperately want to be reassured that their own “common sense” is just as valid as any medical degree.
And, of course, the people who think depression and anxiety can be overcome with sheer willpower, that taking medication to manage them is just “the easy way out” and also poisonous to the human body in some capacity.
One of the key goals of the HHS, the order says, is to “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.” Because what could possibly go wrong with that?
While the order only mentions them in the context of being prescribed to children, Kennedy has certainly made it clear that he is very opposed to whatever it is he thinks SSRIs are.
He has falsely suggested SSRIs might be “responsible” for the increase in school shootings, and said he knows people “who’ve had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than people have getting off heroin” (which is what he was previously on). In reality, very few school shooters were ever prescribed SSRIs, and while it’s best to titrate off of SSRIs under the supervision of a doctor, heroin is still heroin. He still wants these things “studied” the way he wants vaccines to be “studied,” the way he wants everything to be “studied” until they finally just give him the answer he wants.
The fact is, they’ve been studied for years, and while there are side effects, the FDA has determined that the benefits for most people outweigh any risks, as they do for any medication that is approved to go on the market.
In case you think this is limited to him or to Trump, it’s not. Ever since the pandemic, conservatives have decided that all medicine other than Ivermectin is suspect and have landed on SSRIs, in particular, as a target. Kind of an interesting take given that they also regularly claim that “mental health” and not guns is at the root of why we have so many school shootings.
Still, it’s not that surprising conservatives are happily going along with this, given that they regularly deny the reality of anything they haven’t personally dealt with, and instead believe that every problem in the world, everything they don’t like, is due to people being “lazy” or wanting to annoy them, personally. This applies particularly to their understanding of the human brain, which they somehow think they have all figured out (weird, because even scientists do not). They can’t imagine being trans, so they assume trans people are just going along with a trend in order to be cool (and to personally annoy them). The don’t believe they’re depressed, so they think everyone with clinical depression is just “sad” or lazy.
SSRIs save lives, there is no question about that, and there should be no shame whatsoever in taking them. There are thousands upon thousands of people who will tell you so from personal experience, myself included. There are also people who needed to try something else or who had bad side effects, because we’re all different and the whole point of treatment is to find what works for you and your body. The least weak thing on earth is seeking out help and treatment for mental health issues — particularly those stigmatized by absolute dumbasses who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
>> It’s also concerning that it very clearly comes from the Armchair Medical School of All You Need To Do Is To Eat Right, Get Some Fresh Air And Exercise And Get Off Your Dang Phone.<<
With just 22 minutes of direct butthole sunlight, you, too, can throw your insulin, statins, and adderall away for good!
So, they're going to try to kill me.
I will give them credit that taking away the thing that keeps me from spiraling into suicidal ideation is probably more cost-effective than a gulag.