GoKawiil“In my 35 years in the addiction field, I’ve met only two or three people who thought they were addicted to antidepressants versus thousands who were addicted to heroin and other opioids,” Humphreys said.
Risky rhetoric
Stopping the drugs can lead to withdrawal-like symptoms and should be done in stages under the guidance of a doctor, but only a fraction of people experience these symptoms. A 2024 study in The Lancet estimated that about 15 percent, roughly 1 in 6, will have any symptoms from discontinuation, while only 3 percent, or about 1 in 35, will have symptoms classified as severe.
In the daylong MAHA event Monday, Kennedy spoke for less than 15 minutes but repeated his false claim about SSRIs and heroin, despite noting that it had been debunked after his confirmation hearing by fact checks and experts. “The New York Times and a lot of other outlets published a response from that saying that the experts disagreed with the secretary,” Kennedy said. “And we all know that whenever they say ‘trust the experts,’ they got nothing.”
Kennedy instead relied on anecdotes of being a heroin addict himself for more than a decade and having a family member who he claimed was suicidal after stopping an SSRI.
Experts have warned that Kennedy’s anecdotes, false claims, and dark messaging is dangerous—and, according to some research, potentially deadly. A 2024 study in Health Affairs found that the wording and media amplification of a safety warning about antidepressants from the Food and Drug Administration in 2003 may have led to thousands of deaths. The warning was intended to increase monitoring of suicidal thoughts, but instead was linked to “unintended reductions in physician visits for depression, depression diagnoses, antidepressant treatment and use, and psychotherapy visits, as well as increases in psychotropic drug poisonings and increased suicide deaths.”