On the morning of August 27, 2025, worshippers at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis were confronted with unimaginable horror. A gunman, later identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, opened fire during a service, killing two children and injuring 18 others before dying by suicide. The tragedy quickly reverberated across the nation, reigniting fierce debates over gun control, mental health, and the root causes of mass violence in America.
Within hours, a new controversy emerged—not just about the violence itself, but about the narrative surrounding its causes. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaking on Fox News and later on Fox & Friends, suggested that antidepressants, specifically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), could have contributed to the shooting. "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," Kennedy stated, adding that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would investigate whether SSRIs played a role in such tragedies.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed Kennedy’s comments at a Thursday press conference, promising further investigation into possible links between antidepressant use and violence among minors. Yet, law enforcement officials have not directly attributed the Minnesota shooting to mental health issues—or to psychiatric medications. In fact, there is no evidence that Westman was prescribed SSRIs or any psychiatric drugs, despite a documented history of mental health struggles and a fascination with mass killings.
Kennedy’s remarks, while not entirely new, struck a particularly sensitive nerve. He has previously claimed, including in a 2023 interview with Bill Maher and during his Senate confirmation hearing, that the rise of school shootings coincided with the introduction and increased use of antidepressants like Prozac. He has also asserted—contrary to established research—that SSRIs are as addictive as heroin. These assertions have placed him at odds with much of the medical community, and his latest comments have only deepened the divide.
Leading mental health experts were quick to push back. Dr. Ragy R. Girgis, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, told reporters, "All the data suggest SSRIs are not the problem." SSRIs, commonly prescribed for depression and anxiety, do not carry official warnings about homicidal ideation, and while a very small number of patients may experience increased aggression, researchers agree the medications themselves are not the root cause of violence.
Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, expressed concern over Kennedy’s comments. He told Axios, "SSRIs are overwhelmingly safe, and equating SSRI users with a killer risks unnecessarily stigmatizing mental health conditions." Humphreys also pointed out a crucial distinction: "There are depressed people, people with schizophrenia, anxious people in every other country, but they can't get guns as easily as you can get them here. And so I think it's a distraction for the real issue. Anybody can have these problems, but in most countries, they couldn't get their hands on a bunch of firearms. And so I feel it's distracting."
Indeed, a comprehensive 2019 study from Stanford University found SSRIs to be both safe and effective in treating anxiety and depression in children. The notion that these medications are fueling an epidemic of violence is not supported by the data, according to the medical consensus.
Political leaders, too, were swift to respond. Minnesota Senator Tina Smith, whose state was left reeling from the tragedy, lambasted Kennedy’s remarks. "I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do," Smith posted on X (formerly Twitter). "Just shut up. Stop peddling bulls---. You should be fired." Smith’s frustration was echoed by other Democrats, who argued that focusing on mental health and antidepressants is a distraction from what they see as the primary issue: easy access to high-powered firearms. "There are 400 million guns in this country. More guns than people. In America, we are ten times more likely to be shot in a school or playground than any other developed nation," Smith wrote in another post.
Kennedy, however, has remained steadfast in his position. On Thursday, he dismissed calls for stricter gun control, instead framing mass shootings as a "health crisis" that demands a closer look at psychiatric drugs and their societal effects. "People have had guns in this country forever," Kennedy told Fox News. "When I was a kid, we had shooting clubs at our school. Kids, my classmates, and other people would bring a .22 rifle with their guns to school and park in the parking lot. Nobody was shooting up schools." He continued, "There’s never been a time in the history of humanity where people walked into a crowd, or a church, or a movie theater, or a school, or a crowd of strangers and just started randomly shooting. It’s happening in our country, it’s not happening around the world. And there are many other countries that have comparable levels [of] guns that we have in this country—we had comparable levels in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s and people weren’t doing that. Something changed, and it dramatically changed human behavior."
Kennedy has pledged to leave "nothing off limits" in his agency’s investigation into chronic disease and health crises, including the role of SSRIs, other psychiatric drugs, vaccines, environmental chemicals, and ultra-processed foods. He has argued that the United States is "the most overmedicated nation in the world," citing the fact that the use of SSRI drugs among teenagers and adults increased by nearly 400% from the early 1990s to 2006, with a further 35% rise from 2015 to 2021. By 2014, one in ten adults had an SSRI prescription. Despite this, the percentage of U.S. adults diagnosed with depression has continued to climb, reaching 29% in 2023, according to a Gallup poll—up nearly 10 percentage points from 2015.
Yet, the medical community remains skeptical of Kennedy’s approach. SSRIs are not used specifically to treat gender dysphoria, though they can be prescribed for depression and anxiety, which are more prevalent among transgender individuals. Some conservatives have seized on Westman’s gender identity to frame the shooting in terms of mental illness, but experts caution against conflating the issues.
The aftermath of the shooting also saw unrest within federal health agencies. On August 28, dozens of staff members at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staged a walkout after the director was ousted amid pressure to align with the Trump administration’s "Make America Healthy Again" movement—a sign of growing tension between political leadership and the scientific community.
As the nation mourns yet another senseless tragedy, the debate over its causes has become as contentious as ever. Kennedy’s willingness to question established science and focus on psychiatric drugs has energized some, infuriated others, and left many wondering whether the search for solutions is being sidetracked by the search for scapegoats. The one certainty: the urgent need for answers—and for healing—remains.
