— This celebrity after nobody guessed her name correctly on Jeopardy!. We’ll take “Reasons we love her” for $1,000.
Mental Health
Prozac, Meet Politics
What’s going on: In recent years, antidepressant stigma has waned significantly. Celebrities like Lady Gaga and Chrissy Teigen (along with your bestie, your work wife, your brow waxer) have opened up about how medications like Prozac and Zoloft help them treat anxiety and depression. “Live, Laugh, Lexapro” merch abounds. Now, advocates fear a new push by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to curb SSRI prescriptions could undo some of that progress. This week, he announced new guidelines and training for clinicians that encourage them to tap nonpharmaceutical options like therapy and exercise (we love our yoga class, but it can’t solve everything). A new reimbursement mechanism under Medicare and Medicaid will allow doctors to be paid for the time they spend helping patients get off antidepressants.
But don’t those medications help?: They do. Although RFK Jr. said he’s not telling people to skip their medications, skeptics worry that’s the message in between the lines. Kennedy has previously claimed people “have had much worse experiences getting off SSRIs than they do getting off heroin” (a claim experts and research refute, though there can be withdrawal symptoms). He’s also made reducing SSRI use a major plank of his MAHA agenda, including a push to avoid them during pregnancy. The American Psychiatric Association took issue with the new changes (partly because it wasn’t included in conversations). It pushed back on the idea that SSRIs are overprescribed, noting that not everyone who needs them can access them. About one in six American adults took SSRIs in 2025, and — while they’re not without side effects — they help millions of people get through the day.
