Trump casts psychiatric and weight-loss drugs as threats to children

President Donald Trump has instructed his administration to scrutinize the “threat” to children posed by antidepressants, stimulants and other common psychiatric drugs, targeting medication taken by millions in his latest challenge to long-standing medical practices.

The directive came in an executive order Thursday that established a “Make America Healthy Again” commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has criticized the use of those drugs and issued false claims about them.

The order said the commission should prepare a “Make Our Children Healthy Again” assessment within 100 days that examines “the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.” The directive comes as children and teens endure a mental health crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Kennedy also has made childhood nutrition and healthful food a signature issue. He has been critical of the boom in weight loss and diabetes drugs, including Zepbound and Mounjaro made by Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. as well as Ozempic and Wegovy made by Novo Nordisk.

The medication review joins a slew of Trump administration policies upending the government’s approach to health, many of which are embroiled in legal challenges. They include attempts to remove vaccine information from health agency websites, to ban gender transition care for children and to cut billions in biomedical research funding.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said the order follows concerns about doctors overprescribing the drugs and harming Americans of all ages. The president called for a review of prescription practices and use of the drugs to determine whether the government should offer new guidance on the medication.

“The Trump administration will continue to review current best practices in patient care and scientific research to implement needed reforms,” Desai said in an email.

Marketa M. Wills, chief executive officer of the American Psychiatric Association, said psychiatric drugs can be very effective and generally are given to children carefully after front-line treatments such as talk therapy.

“In many cases, they can give children their lives back,” Wills said. “It’s a long, involved process before kids get started on medication, and it’s done judiciously.”

As with nearly every medication, medical professionals have debated the protocols for providing children psychiatric and weight-loss drugs, as well as ways to balance the risks and benefits.

In 2021, 8% of children between the ages of 5 and 17 received medication for their mental health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An analysis by MedPage Today found that in September 2024 there were more than 125,000 prescriptions written for GLP-1 weight loss drugs by pediatric and adolescent medicine specialists, up from nearly 60,000 in October 2022.

Jonathan Zhang, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, said many drugs used to treat mental health conditions in the United States are being used off-label in children. Additional research would be beneficial, he said, but medication usage should be considered in the context of the limited availability of therapists and alternative treatments.

“There is a growing mental health crisis among youth, so if there is overutilization of medication, in part it is also an access and provider shortage problem,” Zhang said.

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Kennedy’s controversial mental health comments

Some mainstream public health experts have doubted that Kennedy, a lawyer who founded an anti-vaccine organization, is qualified to craft sound policy given his lack of medical training and long history of promoting conspiracy theories and sloppy research.

In interviews and public statements over the years, Kennedy has compared antidepressants and weight-loss drugs to controlled substances. He has said antidepressants are harder to quit than heroin, a claim contradicted by research and experts. He told Fox News in October that pharmaceutical companies are counting on selling weight-loss medication to Americans because patients are “stupid” and “addicted to drugs.”

Kennedy has speculated that psychiatric drugs lead to mass shootings at schools, claims that are not grounded in credible research.

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.

During his short-lived presidential campaign, Kennedy proposed creating wellness farms where young people could “get off” SSRIs and Adderall, a stimulant widely used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Those comments were first reported by Mother Jones.

A Washington Post review of Kennedy’s public appearances found he also promoted these centers as particularly beneficial for Black youth.

“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 in a June episode of the 19Keys online show.

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Antidepressants

The rate of antidepressant prescriptions for adolescents has jumped sharply in recent years, rising 43% between 2016 and 2022, according to a paper published last year in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Wills, of the American Psychiatric Association, said antidepressants are not meant to be a front-line treatment for children. They are used when other treatment such as talk therapy is not working.

Awais Aftab, a psychiatrist in Cleveland, said there are legitimate questions surrounding proper use of psychiatric drugs in children because of side effects, limited data on long-term use and evidence that SSRIs are less effective in young people.

“Psychiatric medications are being used because there is a genuine clinical need,” Aftab said in an email. “The response should not be to restrict access to medication by thinking their use is unnecessary, but rather, the goal should be to increase access to high-quality clinical care that goes beyond reliance on medications.”

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Stimulants

The scrutiny of stimulants such as Adderall comes as parents and children have confronted shortages.

The use of stimulants by adults has spiked in recent years but has been largely stagnant or declining in children and teenagers, according to an analysis of commercial insurance claims by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, about 10% of boys and 5% of girls ages 10 to 14 received a stimulant, the review showed.

“I’m worried about the proliferation of stimulants and mind altering substances,” Kennedy said during a 2023 C-SPAN appearance. “I don’t think it’s a good thing for people.”

Max Wiznitzer, a professor of pediatrics and neurology at Case Western University and specialist in ADHD, said research has shown stimulants are highly effective and side effects such as decreased appetite rare.

He said that stimulants are best used as a bridge to help children develop good behavioral habits. But he questioned whether the Trump administration is acting in good faith in evaluating their use.

“That is not an open-minded approach to the medication by using the word threat,” Wiznitzer said.

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Weight-loss drugs

The Food and Drug Administration approved Ozempic for use in children in 2023. The same year, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its guidance to recommend use of the drugs for children ages 12 and up with obesity and, in some cases, for children as young as 8.

Mark Fendrick, professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan, said it was “very surprising” to see weight-loss drugs grouped in with other medications that Trump said should be assessed as potential threats.

He said there have been numerous recent peer-reviewed studies – including one published in January in Nature Medicine that have shown the drugs to be safe and effective for a wide range of indications.

Fendrick said he supports Kennedy’s emphasis on healthy eating as a way to combat the nation’s obesity epidemic. However, he said that being able to treat children with GLP-1 medications will pay off in future health gains.

“Many people only have a short window for success, and these efforts that are outlined like reducing ultra-processed foods can take multiple decades to achieve,” Fendrick said.