HHS Moves to Curb Antidepressant Prescribing and Expand Deprescribing Guidance

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that his department will take steps to curb antidepressant and broader psychiatric-drug prescribing, framing the effort as a response to what HHS described as psychiatric overprescribing. The policy push, unveiled at a Make America Healthy Again Institute event focused on overmedicalization, includes new federal guidance encouraging clinicians to prioritize non-drug interventions and to make deprescribing easier to support and bill.

The Details

Kennedy said psychiatric drugs should no longer be treated as the default option for patients, according to reporting from The Guardian. At the MAHA Institute event, he said: "We will no longer treat them as the default, we will treat them as one option, to be used when appropriate, with full transparency and with a clear path off when they are no longer needed."

CNN reported that HHS launched a federal plan to limit overprescribing of psychiatric drugs, including support for deprescribing. The department sent providers a letter encouraging non-drug interventions such as psychotherapy, diet, physical activity and social connection alongside careful medication review.

Ars Technica reported that HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rolled out clinician training, a Dear Colleague letter and billing guidance intended to make deprescribing psychiatric medications easier to support and reimburse. The administration framed the initiative as an expansion of informed choice and non-pharmacological treatment access rather than a blanket order for patients to stop medication.

Context

The announcement drew pushback from the American Psychiatric Association, which said it welcomes more attention to the US mental health crisis and more research on prescribing and deprescribing, but strongly objected to framing the crisis primarily as a problem of overmedicalization or overprescribing. The APA said: "Deprescribing alone is not a sufficient response to this crisis."

Kennedy has repeatedly linked selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to violence and mass shootings and compared withdrawing from antidepressants to heroin withdrawal, claims that mental-health and addiction experts have rejected as unsupported by evidence. Mental-health experts quoted in reporting said stopping antidepressants can cause discontinuation symptoms and should be medically supervised, but they disputed Kennedy's rhetoric equating those effects with heroin addiction.

A 2025 state-by-state survey cited by The Guardian found nearly 17% of respondents were currently using antidepressants and that a significant share of adults in every state opposed efforts to restrict access to antidepressant prescribing.

Ars Technica cited a 2024 Lancet estimate that about 15% of patients experience any discontinuation symptoms when stopping antidepressants and about 3% experience symptoms classified as severe, undercutting Kennedy's broader rhetoric about withdrawal.

What's Next

The precise scope of any future prescribing restrictions or program timelines was not fully detailed in the reporting reviewed. The reporting focused on antidepressants and broader psychiatric-drug prescribing, but did not fully enumerate which medication classes will be affected first. The underlying HHS and CMS source documents were referenced in reporting but were not directly retrieved, so the full text of the provider guidance and billing changes may clarify how the new policies will be implemented.