{"id":105091,"date":"2025-08-29T20:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T20:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/105091\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T20:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T20:29:09","slug":"after-shooting-rfk-jr-says-hhs-will-study-psychiatric-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/105091\/","title":{"rendered":"After shooting, RFK Jr. says HHS will study psychiatric drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, said Kennedy should be fired after he suggested antidepressants played a role in the Aug. 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic School.<\/p>\n

\"play\"<\/p>\n

A father’s emotional account of the Minneapolis church shooting<\/p>\n

Pedro Maldonado shared the moment he found his children after a shooting at their Minneapolis Catholic school.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to explain why all this violence is happening and we need to look at every possibility,\u201d Kennedy said.A 2019 study found most school shooters don\u2019t appear to have been prescribed psychotropic drugs and found no “causal association.\u201d\u201cI dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don\u2019t kill kids, antidepressants do,\u201d Smith wrote to Kennedy on social media.Two children were killed and 18 people were wounded in the attack at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/a> said in the wake of the Minneapolis school shooting that his agency would study whether antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs \u201cmight be contributing to violence,\u201d prompting a Minnesota senator to accuse him of “peddling bulls—.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Kennedy, in a Fox News interview,<\/a> said HHS is looking at a group of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)<\/a> and \u201csome of the other psychiatric drugs.\u201d The Health secretary has long raised concerns about SSRIs and linked them to school shootings.<\/p>\n

A 2019 study<\/a> found most school shooters don\u2019t appear to have been prescribed psychotropic drugs and \u201cwhen they were, no direct or causal association was found.\u201d<\/p>\n

Important: RFK Jr.’s misinformation on antidepressants matters. Here’s what to know.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, said Kennedy is focused on the wrong issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don\u2019t kill kids, antidepressants do,\u201d Smith wrote<\/a> on social media. \u201cJust shut up. Stop peddling bulls—. You should be fired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police say Robin Westman, 23, opened fire<\/a> at Annunciation Catholic School, killing two children and injuring 18 people. Westman wrote in a journal<\/a> about suffering from depression and having suicidal and homicidal thoughts, according to media reports. <\/a>It\u2019s unclear if Westman was taking any psychiatric drugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to explain why all this violence is happening and we need to look at every possibility,\u201d Kennedy said on Fox.<\/p>\n

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Minnesota Senator Tina Smith on Annunciation school shooting<\/p>\n

Sen. Tina Smith urged people to come together after the senseless act of violence that left two children dead and 17 others hurt at a Minneapolis Catholic school on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Fox 9<\/p>\n

Democrats, in the wake of yet another shooting, are raising concerns about access to guns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 400 million guns in this country,\u201d Smith wrote<\/a> on social media. \u201cMore guns than people. In America, we are ten times more likely to be shot in a school or playground than any other developed nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy said during an Aug. 28 news conference in Texas that “people have had guns in this country forever.”<\/p>\n

“Something changed, and it dramatically changed human behavior, and one of the culprits we need to examine is whether the fact that we are the most over-medicated nation in the world,” he added.<\/p>\n

Some conservatives have also focused on Westman\u2019s gender identity.<\/p>\n

Westman\u2019s name was legally changed to Robin because \u201cminor child identifies as female,\u201d a judge wrote, according to media reports. <\/a>Kennedy\u2019s Fox News comments were prompted by questions about Westman\u2019s transition process from male to female.<\/p>\n

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at a news conference<\/a> that \u201canybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Minnesota politicians push for gun reform after church shooting<\/p>\n

Minnesota leaders, including Rep. Ilhan Omar and Mayor Jacob Frey, called for swift gun reforms after the deadly Minneapolis church shooting.<\/p>\n

Kennedy is a longtime vaccine skeptic whose views on several health matters are considered fringe by mainstream experts. His tenure as the nation’s top health official has been tumultuous. He has sought to oust Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez<\/a> amid a policy disagreement, but she is refusing to step down.<\/p>\n

Monarez’s contested ouster, less than one month after the Senate confirmed her to the role, prompted the resignations of three other top CDC officials in protest of Kennedy’s leadership, including his direction on vaccines.<\/p>\n

Contributing: Ben Adler, Joey Garrison<\/p>\n

(This story has been updated to add new information.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, said Kennedy should be fired after he suggested antidepressants played a role in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7814,617,64,63,13884,50361,46292,75608,1791,17106,1300,30141,19830,19386,1786,21826,4830,8112,1730,6022,7775,75586,75610,580,1953,39630,5862,28146,4634,137,15369,3163,30916,8280,75602,490,5418,13641,514,50341,5387,75601,36227,44,1787,323,54447,19828,1861,84,24297,1847,20637,75605,11790,75603,75611,17574,1792,27672,75604,39,30139,46785,75607,1785,75606,441,13889,75609,39627,7813,7817,15466],"class_list":["post-105091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-abuse","tag-and","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bill","tag-bill-maher","tag-centers","tag-centers-for-disease-control","tag-content","tag-control","tag-death","tag-death-u0026-tragedy","tag-democratic","tag-democratic-party","tag-department","tag-department-of-health-and-human-services","tag-depression","tag-disease","tag-drugs","tag-drugs-u0026-medications","tag-f","tag-firearms","tag-firearms-u0026-weapons","tag-for","tag-fox","tag-fox-news","tag-gun","tag-gun-violence","tag-guns","tag-health","tag-human","tag-jr","tag-kennedy","tag-life","tag-maher","tag-medication","tag-medications","tag-mental","tag-mental-health","tag-minneapolis","tag-minnesota","tag-mn","tag-negative","tag-news","tag-of","tag-overall","tag-overall-negative","tag-party","tag-people","tag-politics","tag-robert","tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","tag-school","tag-school-shootings","tag-senate","tag-sensitive","tag-sensitive-subjects","tag-services","tag-sharing","tag-shootings","tag-subjects","tag-top-stories","tag-tragedy","tag-transgender","tag-transgender-people","tag-u-s","tag-u-s-senate","tag-u0026","tag-usat","tag-usat-content-sharing-life","tag-usat-content-sharing-news","tag-violence","tag-violence-u0026-abuse","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}