HHS Secretary Kennedy Unveils Initiative to Reduce Psychiatric Medication Use Through Deprescribing Incentives

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced a plan on Monday to stop psychiatric doctors from overprescribing medications to patients who do not need them, The Federalist reported.

Where he highlighted the issue as part of a broader dependency crisis. He announced a new Dear Colleague Letter from HHS that will begin a plan to pay doctors to pursue off-ramps for psychiatric medications. “The United States does not just face a mental health crisis.

We face a dependency crisis driven by overmedicalization,” Kennedy said. He added, “This is a system-level pattern. Over 16 percent of American adults take antidepressants, Kennedy noted. In addition, 10 percent of children are on some form of prescription drug for a mental health issue, while 30 percent of college students have used psychiatric medications in the past year.

Over 50 percent of nursing home residents are on prescription antidepressant drugs. The Dear Colleague Letter will kickstart reforms across HHS, including at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

Health care providers are being directed to expand the use of evidence-based non-pharmacologic treatments and to strengthen informed consent and shared decision making, Kennedy stated.

SAMHSA will conduct national training modules on the risks associated with psychiatric medication, how to taper a patient off the medications, and encouraging deprescribing. SAMHSA and HRSA will train providers at over 1,400 federally qualified health centers overseeing about 39 million patients about how to conduct medically supervised taperings.