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Mother Jones illustration; Tom Williams\/CQ Roll Call\/ZUMA; Unsplash<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Health and Human Services<\/span> Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long railed against antidepressants<\/a>, and now he has very practical ways to attack them. <\/p>\n As my colleague Kiera Butler has written<\/a>, Kennedy has claimed, without evidence, that they can cause addiction and school shootings. He even proposed<\/a> sending people who take them to \u201cwellness farms,\u201d where they can grow their own organic foods, get \u201cre-parented,\u201d and wean themselves off antidepressants and other medications. <\/p>\n But on Monday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appeared to move closer towards realizing RFK\u2019s goal of getting people off the drugs, quietly convening<\/a> a so-called expert panel<\/a> to discuss selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors\u2014a type of antidepressant commonly known as SSRIs\u2014and pregnancy. <\/strong>The two-hour panel was livestreamed<\/a> and is available to watch on the FDA\u2019s YouTube page. It was moderated by a pair of FDA staffers, who gave each panelist five minutes to make an opening presentation and then asked a few questions submitted by the public. While 13 percent of Americans use antidepressants, whose efficacy varies<\/a> but have been shown<\/a> to help at least 20 percent of people who take them, a far smaller number of pregnant women\u2014research suggests<\/a> six to ten percent\u2014are on them. <\/p>\n Many of the panel\u2019s ten participants\u2014a combination of researchers and practicing psychologists, several of whom have publicly spoken out against the use of antidepressants\u2014largely repeated what one women\u2019s health expert called<\/a> \u201cMAHA talking points\u201d against medications and the biological legitimacy of anxiety and depression. Often, panelists\u2019 arguments were so full of misinformation that Steven Fleischman, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a professional group for OB-GYNs, promptly put out a statement<\/a> calling the panel \u201calarmingly unbalanced\u201d and alleging that the majority \u201cdid not adequately acknowledge the harms of untreated perinatal mood disorders in pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n There are, indeed, major mental health struggles facing American moms. Research published<\/a> by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2020 found that approximately one in eight women experience postpartum depression (PPD) after giving birth, which can lead<\/a> to difficulties bonding, developmental delays for the infant, and other<\/a> negative<\/a> health outcomes. The latest CDC data, from 2017 to 2019, shows<\/a> that mental health conditions, including suicides and overdoses, were the leading underlying causes of pregnancy-related deaths. The picture has only grown more dire recently: Research published<\/a> in February in the Journal of Health Economics and Outcomes<\/em> found that the Supreme Court\u2019s decision overruling Roe v. Wade<\/em> led to an increase in PPD diagnoses in states with abortion bans compared to those without. Another large study, published<\/a> in the May issue of <\/strong>JAMA Internal Medicine<\/em>, found that American mothers reported large declines in their mental health from 2016 to 2023, with single and low-income mothers reporting particularly large drops.<\/p>\n But listening to the FDA panel on Monday, you would be forgiven for thinking that perinatal depression\u2014which refers to depression both during and after pregnancy\u2014is not, in fact, real. <\/p>\n In his introductory remarks, FDA Chief Dr. Martin Makary\u2014an abortion opponent<\/a> and a former surgeon and professor at the\u00a0Johns Hopkins School of Medicine<\/a>\u2014called for more study of the \u201croot causes\u201d of perinatal depression. \u201cWe have to talk about the role of healthy relationships, of communities, of natural light exposure, of other modalities and co-factors that may be involved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Another panelist, Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, a psychiatrist whose practice focuses on weaning people from their psychiatric medications, similarly claimed that in contrast to physical conditions, it is impossible to point to distinct causes for mental health disorders. Instead, he claimed, personal problems like loneliness and job dissatisfaction tend to trigger <\/em>depression. \u201cThese are not things to be fixed with medical intervention,\u201d added Witt-Doerring, who also runs<\/a> a YouTube channel that spotlights the stories of people who have faced adverse side effects from taking psychiatric medications.<\/p>\n Women are \u201cnaturally experiencing their emotions more intensely, and those are gifts. They\u2019re not symptoms of a disease.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Roger McFillen, a psychologist and host of a podcast<\/a> on which he and guests have railed against vaccines and birth control, suggested that women are \u201cnaturally experiencing their emotions more intensely, and those are gifts. They\u2019re not symptoms of a disease.\u201d McFillen also suggested, without evidence, that \u201cmany women feel coerced\u201d to get on medications to treat perinatal depression.<\/p>\n\n