RFK Jr. Lies About Black Children and Endangers Efforts for Health Equality

Image Description: Two Black children writing at a table

 

Though RFK Jr. may deny it, in a 2024 podcast, he made the profoundly racist comment that “Psychiatric drugs, which every black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence”. The weight of race in his comment is startling given the realities of mental health care for black adolescents. His insinuations about psychiatric medications are also incredibly disturbing and, coming from the Secretary of Health, potentially life-threatening for the millions of Americans who take such medications. What follows below is a debunking of his conspiracy theories and alternate solutions to disparities in adolescent mental health treatment.

Race and treatment disparities

  • Myth: Black and white children are diagnosed equally, with the same access to treatment and fair diagnostic standards.

    • Fact: According to a 2025 study from the Journal of the American Medical Association, black youth are more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive behavioural health issues than white children, despite measuring similarly on aggression risk evaluations.

    • Fact: The rate of medication use among Black adolescents was found to be lower than that of White and Latinx youth in a 2010 survey and its 2017 follow-up.

    • Fact: Black people were found less likely to participate in genetics research for mental health (in this study, bipolar disorder) due to concerns of racial discrimination, stunting research which could help resolve health disparities in the African-American community.

    • Fact: During the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, psychiatrists determined that “black culture” and efforts to secure civil liberties were diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, explaining the higher rates of diagnosis. While that is no longer a prevalent assumption, clinicians today may be more likely to diagnose black people with conditions like schizophrenia because they over-emphasize that diagnosis criteria over that for depression.

Psychiatric medications and their side effects

  • Myth: Psychiatric medications are proven to cause violence in patients.

    • Fact: Violent behaviour among patients using psychiatric medication were mostly relegated to patients who already had a history of violent crimes according to one 2020 study. Moreover, convictions for violent crime only occurred in 2.7% of the studied population, which researchers described as a “rare” phenomenon.

    • Fact: A 2022 study found that there was no correlation between SSRIs and violence among hospitalized patients.

    • Fact: Aggression among children between the ages of six to thirteen was found to decrease with the right stimulant medication dose combined with behavioural therapy.

    • Fact: The Yale Child Study center found in 2017 that there was no significant correlation between irritability and stimulant medication use.

What does this mean for treatment?

Resolving issues of racial disparity in mental health care is no easy feat, particularly in the time of an administration that has rolled back DEI protections and capped student loan borrowing, affecting primarily medical students (including mental health clinicians). Potential solutions to bridge treatment gaps may include:

  • Initiatives to improve health care coverage to people of colour, who , due to the nature of their employment, are often excluded from adequate health insurance. This includes universal health care which, while still riddled with differences in treatment between white and non-white people, has the potential to reduce barriers to treatment.

  • Re-installing DEI-based financial support for organizations working to provide mental health care to people of colour, including the Loveland Foundation, the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM), and Black Men Heal.

  • Improving access to education programs for people of colour interested in becoming mental health clinicians

Ignoring the issues of racial disparity in healthcare for black and other people of colour has been cast as one way to serve “every person with equal dignity and respect”. This absurdly and dangerously ignores the reality that equality is currently not being achieved and cannot be achieved under leaders that are determined to cast non-white individuals in a negative, degrading light. Until the country is served by a health secretary that presents truth and adequately works to improve health treatment for all, it is up to the American people to separate myth and conspiracy theories from reality and advocate, through any means necessary, for equitable access in healthcare.Resources and References

Mary Cepeda is a freelance writer and potential grad student interested in debunking political conspiracy theories that negatively affect already marginalized individuals.

IDHA’s blog is home to diversity of perspectives and opinions about mental health and healing. These posts seek to magnify a wide range of perspectives on different topics. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

 
Social justiceMary Cepeda