The medical community has reacted with alarm to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s claim that his family members have had a harder time getting off antidepressants than heroin. The American Psychiatric Association and five other psychiatric organizations recently declared that likening antidepressants to Schedule I drugs like heroin was “misleading” and emphasized that antidepressants are “safe and effective.”
Given the routine long-term use of antidepressants, we need more research into whether a medication’s effects wear off over time, or if some patients experience more harm from prolonged use than others.
The public deserves advice about psychiatric medications that does not oscillate between stupor and alarmism. Antidepressants, like all medical interventions, come with benefits and trade-offs. If psychiatry refuses to engage seriously with patients’ concerns, if the mantra of “safe and effective” is all it is willing to publicly say, it will lose credibility. We cannot disregard those whose lives have been derailed by psychiatric medications.
