Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says that the Department of Health (HHS) will research whether antidepressants and medications used in gender affirming medical care contributed to yesterday’s deadly school shooting in Minneapolis. The pledge follows a longtime habit of Republicans blaming mental illness for school shootings instead of guns.

During a recent interview on Fox and Friends, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked,”[In regards to the shooter,] you are dealing with a person who is trans, that was transitioning. Are you going to be examining at all some of the drugs that are used in order to make that transition happening, to see if it plays a role [in shootings]?”

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Kilmeade then pointed out that a 2023 school shooter in Nashville, Tennessee, was also trans, but didn’t mention that the vast majority of mass shooters have been white cisgender men. Claims linking gender-affirming care to violence are often driven by anti-trans rhetoric, which exploits isolated tragedies to villainize the broader transgender community. 

Kennedy answered, “We are doing those kind of studies now. At [the National Institutes of Health], we’re launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor] drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence. You know, many of them have black box warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation. So we need, we can’t exclude those as a culprit.”

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RFK Jr. probing SSRIs and psychiatric drugs drugs as contributions to violence

"We're 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."

THE PUBLIC NEEDS TO KNOW WHAT’S IN… pic.twitter.com/01AEh2czHq

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 28, 2025

Responding to Kennedy’s claims, Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith (D) wrote via social media, “I dare you to go to Annunciation School [the site of the recent shooting] and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bulls**t. You should be fired.”

“There are 400 million guns in this country. More guns than people,” she added. “In America, we are ten times more likely to be shot in a school or playground than any other developed nation.”

In a 2023 livestream on X with transphobic billionaire Elon Musk, Kennedy claimed there is “tremendous circumstantial evidence” that people using antidepressants are more likely to commit school shootings.

Dr. Asim Shah, a professor and executive vice chair of psychiatry and behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, told ABC News that no scientific evidence supports Kennedy’s claim and that such claims wrongly stigmatize people with mental illness, discouraging such people from seeking diagnosis and treatment.

An Al Jazeera fact check on Kennedy’s claim found that, because about 13% of the adult population uses antidepressants, if SSRIs caused violence, there would be higher rates of violence nationwide. However, studies on US school shootings show most attackers were not using psychiatric medicines, which have anti-violence effects, the fact check added.

On Wednesday, numerous high-level officials under Kennedy resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of them, gay Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, wrote in his resignation that Kennedy’s views “do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”

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