RFK Jr. links SSRIs and mass shootings. What does science say?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, suggested Thursday that psychiatric drugs may have played a role in the Minnesota Catholic school shooting — a statement widely criticized as unsupported by science.

During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy whether the government was investigating the role of medications that treat gender dysphoria in crimes such as this one. The 23-year-old suspect, Robin Westman, was assigned male at birth and legally changed names as a teen to reflect a female identity, officials said.

Kennedy, who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, said his agency is “launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.”

SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a class of medications widely used to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders, have been repeatedly criticized by Kennedy, who alleges they pose serious health risks. In his “Make America Healthy Again” report, he cites them as a contributing factor to chronic disease in children.

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) accused Kennedy of using the tragedy to spread disinformation to push a political agenda. “I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community that, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do,” she wrote on X. “Just shut up. Stop peddling bulls--t.”

Here’s what the research says:

In interviews and public statements over the years, Kennedy has speculated that psychiatric drugs lead to mass shootings at schools. In an April interview with YouTuber George Janko, Kennedy said the National Institutes of Health should override medical privacy rules to determine whether mass shooters used SSRIs.

In comparison, antidepressants are some of the most widely used drugs on the market, with national surveys estimating that 11.4 percent of Americans 18 years and older were on them in 2023.

“All the data suggest SSRIs are not the problem,” Girgis, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute.

His research shows other commonalities between mass shooters, however. They are three fold: 1) a “great fascination” or affinity for firearms 2) severe nihilism “which taken to the extreme form results in suicide” and 3) a desire for fame.

Kennedy has regularly linked SSRIs to violent behavior and promoted “wellness farms” as particularly beneficial for Black youth to “get off” SSRIs. “Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, on SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented, to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens. You’ll actually have to talk to people,” Kennedy said last year on the 19Keys online show.

Serotonin is a chemical that helps transmit signals between parts of the brain that are responsible for mood, sleep and behaviors.

Girgis said the misunderstanding that SSRIs are linked to violence is because of people conflating findings about suicidal ideation and irritability with violence.

“There’s no link with violence. People just jump from suicide to violence. SSRIs most likely decrease violence. But it hasn’t been tested,” he said.

Studies have shown that during the first few days of starting a medication or stopping the medications some patients can experience what doctors call “restlessness” or irritability. Jonathan Alpert, chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Montefiore Einstein, compares the feeling to how someone might be after “having an extra cup of coffee” or “getting six hours of sleep instead of the seven or eight they need.”

“This makes people very uncomfortable and this is reported as aggression, but it’s really verbal aggression,” he said.

Kennedy claimed on Thursday during his “Fox & Friends” interview that many of these medications “have black box warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation, so we can’t exclude those as a culprit.”

Homicidal ideation was previously on the list of possible adverse events for the antidepressant known as Effexor, but its black box currently does not contain that language. HHS and the White House did not immediately return a request for comment on what drugs Kennedy was speaking about.

Brendel said black box warnings are really important so that patients are aware of risks and can be properly monitored. But she added that sometimes those labels can create unnecessary fear.

“The problem is that we as humans are not great at assessing risk. When we see those warnings we can sometimes forget that the FDA determined that the medication is safe for use and effective. And we have decades of data showing that SSRIs are both safe and effective,” Brendel said.