U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday that he’s looking into psychiatric medication as a potential cause for American gun violence and mass shootings. The comments were a repetition of an unfounded assertion that Kennedy has made before, this time in the wake of a Minneapolis mass shooting that killed two children.
Kennedy’s comments came at the end of a Thursday press conference in Austin, where the health secretary sat alongside Gov. Greg Abbott to talk about rural health care. A reporter asked Kennedy if he considers gun violence to be a public health crisis.
“I certainly consider mass shootings a health crisis,” Kennedy responded. “And we are doing for the first time real studies to find out what the ideology of that is. And we’re looking for the first time at psychiatric drugs.”
It’s a link that Kennedy has made before, including during his confirmation hearings for the health secretary role.
A 2019 research review found that most school shooters from 2000 to 2017 had not been treated with psychiatric medication. For those who had, the review found, there was no direct or causal link between the medication and the shooting.
Two medical doctors told The Dallas Morning News Thursday afternoon that there’s not a connection between psychiatric medications and shootings.
Dr. Ardashes Mirzatuny is a psychiatrist in Dallas.
“I don’t think there’s a link with gun violence,” Mirzatuny said. “In fact, one should be on some kind of psychiatric medication to forestall any kind of violence.”
Dr. Paul Nestadt is a psychiatry professor and the medical director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Suicide Prevention.
“There is absolutely no evidence for a link between the use of psychiatric medications and mass shootings,” Nestadt said in an email. “There is, on the other hand, very clear and conclusive evidence linking access to firearms and mass shootings.”
Kennedy did not mention any specific shooting during his comments at the Austin press conference. But the response echoed earlier comments that the health secretary made on Fox News when asked about Wednesday’s mass shooting in Minneapolis. That shooting, at a Catholic school, left two children dead and more than a dozen other people injured.
On a segment of Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy if he would investigate whether medication to treat gender dysphoria could be to blame for the shooting. (Authorities have identified the Minneapolis shooter as transgender.)
Kennedy responded more broadly about psychiatric medication, and said federal researchers are looking into “the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.”
SSRIs are a class of antidepressants, which are commonly used to treat depression, anxiety and other conditions. SSRIs are not specifically used for gender dysphoria.
I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do.
Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired. https://t.co/DC0uTWkQlb
— Tina Smith (@SenTinaSmith) August 28, 2025
U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., responded to the Fox & Friends clip on X and told Kennedy to “Just shut up.”
At the Austin news conference, Kennedy added that the U.S. is “the most overmedicated nation in the world.” He brought up and then rejected the idea that the ubiquity of guns in the U.S. could be a reason for the prevalence of gun violence and mass shootings.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comment from Dr. Paul Nestadt.