Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz stood together Monday to announce a new mental health initiative from HHS and Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The details are still emerging. But the direction is clear.
The two most controversial health officials in America are turning their attention to the crisis nobody in the establishment wants to honestly discuss: why Americans are the most medicated, most depressed, most anxious people in the developed world — and getting worse every year.
The Establishment Is Already Panicking
Before the initiative was even announced, the attacks started.
California Governor Gavin Newsom filed a complaint against Dr. Oz last week over a video alleging large-scale healthcare fraud in his state.
Not a rebuttal. Not a counter-proposal. A complaint. A legal attack designed to silence and discredit before the public hears what Oz has to say.
That’s how you know something important is happening. When the establishment moves to destroy the messenger before the message arrives, the message is probably something they don’t want you to hear.
America’s Mental Health Catastrophe
The numbers are staggering and everyone knows it.
One in five American adults lives with a mental illness. That’s over 50 million people.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans aged 10 to 34. Children. Teenagers. Young adults. Killing themselves at rates that would have been unimaginable a generation ago.
Anxiety disorders affect over 40 million adults. Depression rates have tripled since the early 2000s. Teen depression and anxiety have skyrocketed — particularly among girls — in the social media age.
America spends more on mental healthcare than any country on Earth. The results? The crisis deepens every year.
More money. More drugs. More therapists. Worse outcomes.
At some point, you have to ask whether the approach itself is the problem.
The Most Medicated Nation on Earth
Americans consume more psychiatric medication than any population in human history.
Antidepressants. Anti-anxiety drugs. ADHD stimulants. Antipsychotics. Mood stabilizers. Sleep aids.
One in six American adults takes a psychiatric drug. Among women over 60, it’s one in four.
Children as young as two are being prescribed psychiatric medication. Two years old. Before they can form complete sentences, they’re on mind-altering drugs.
The pharmaceutical industry sells over $30 billion in psychiatric drugs annually in the United States alone.
And after decades of this approach — after medicating tens of millions of people — depression rates are higher than ever. Anxiety is worse. Suicide is up.
The drugs aren’t solving the problem. They’re managing symptoms while the underlying crisis grows.
RFK Jr. Has Been Saying This for Years
Kennedy’s critics call him “anti-science.” They dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist.
But his core argument on health has been remarkably consistent: the American healthcare system is designed to create lifelong patients, not healthy people.
He’s questioned why Americans spend more on healthcare than any nation and rank near the bottom of developed countries on actual health outcomes.
He’s challenged the pharmaceutical industry’s grip on regulatory agencies.
He’s asked why childhood chronic illness has exploded over the past three decades — from autism to allergies to autoimmune disorders to mental health conditions.
These aren’t fringe questions. They’re questions that tens of millions of Americans are asking. The establishment just doesn’t like who’s asking them.
What Kennedy Has Already Done
Since taking over HHS, Kennedy hasn’t been idle.
He’s launched investigations into food additives and dyes linked to behavioral problems in children.
He’s challenged the cozy relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the agencies supposed to regulate them.
He’s pushed for transparency in clinical trial data.
He’s questioned why American children receive more vaccines on a more aggressive schedule than children in any other developed nation — and why asking that question is treated as heresy rather than science.
Last week, Kennedy told Breitbart News that the accomplishments of the second Trump administration “could only be compared to the first 100 days of FDR’s presidency in terms of impact.”
That’s a bold claim. But the scope of what he’s attempting — restructuring America’s entire approach to health — justifies the comparison.
Dr. Oz and the Fraud Question
Dr. Oz brings his own set of credentials and controversies.
As the new administrator of Medicare and Medicaid Services, he oversees the largest healthcare spending programs in the federal government.
His focus has been on fraud. And the numbers are eye-popping.
Medicare and Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers an estimated $100 billion annually. That’s not waste or inefficiency — that’s outright theft.
The video that triggered Newsom’s complaint allegedly exposed large-scale healthcare fraud in California.
Newsom’s response wasn’t to investigate the fraud. It was to attack Oz for talking about it.
That tells you everything about California’s priorities.
The Mental Health Industry Complex
Mental health treatment in America has become an industry — and industries prioritize revenue over outcomes.
Therapy sessions that continue indefinitely. Prescriptions that multiply over time. Treatment plans that manage conditions without curing them.
A patient who recovers is a lost customer. A patient who requires lifelong treatment is a revenue stream.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a business model. And it’s the business model that’s dominated American mental health for decades.
RFK Jr. and Oz are signaling that the federal government is going to examine this model — and potentially disrupt it.
No wonder the establishment is panicking.
The Children Are Not Alright
The most urgent dimension of the mental health crisis is what’s happening to kids.
Teen depression has increased over 60% in the past decade. Teen suicide attempts have surged. Self-harm among teenage girls has reached epidemic proportions.
Social media. Smartphones. Isolation. Academic pressure. Family breakdown. Screen addiction.
The causes are debated. The reality isn’t. American children are suffering at unprecedented rates.
The current approach — medicate them, put them in therapy, hope they improve — clearly isn’t working.
Whatever Kennedy and Oz are proposing, the bar for improvement is on the floor. Doing something different than what’s failed for two decades would be progress.
Newsom’s Priorities Tell the Story
Gavin Newsom governs a state where homelessness has become an international embarrassment. Where fentanyl kills thousands annually. Where mental illness is visible on every downtown sidewalk.
His response to a federal mental health initiative? File a complaint against the people trying to fix it.
Newsom doesn’t want solutions. He wants control. He wants the current system — the one that enriches pharmaceutical companies, employs an army of administrators, and produces worsening outcomes — to continue without interference.
Because the current system serves his donors. It serves his political allies. It serves everyone except the patients.
What’s Actually Needed
America doesn’t need more of the same approach with a bigger budget.
It needs a fundamental rethinking of how we approach mental health.
Less medication as a first resort. More investigation into root causes — diet, exercise, sleep, community, purpose, faith.
Less treating symptoms. More asking why the symptoms exist.
Less industry capture of regulatory agencies. More transparency about what works and what doesn’t.
Whether Kennedy and Oz deliver on that vision remains to be seen. But at minimum, they’re asking the right questions — questions the establishment has refused to ask because the answers threaten the business model.
FDR Comparisons Don’t Come Lightly
Kennedy compared the Trump administration’s health reforms to FDR’s first 100 days.
That’s either delusion or ambition on a scale we haven’t seen.
FDR restructured the American economy. Created Social Security. Transformed the relationship between citizens and government.
Kennedy is attempting something analogous in health: restructuring how America approaches wellness, disease, and the pharmaceutical industry’s role in both.
If he succeeds even partially, the impact on American life could be generational.
If the establishment stops him — through lawsuits, media attacks, and bureaucratic resistance — the mental health crisis will continue its relentless escalation.
Fifty million Americans with mental illness. A generation of children drowning in anxiety and depression. A pharmaceutical industry profiting from the suffering.
Something has to change.
Kennedy and Oz just signaled they intend to change it.
The establishment’s panic suggests they might actually mean it.