RFK Jr. says HHS will launch study to see if there's connection between psychiatric drugs, violence

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday that there will be a National Institutes of Health study launched to figure out if there's any connection between violence and psychiatric drugs.

"At NIH we're launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence," Kennedy said during an interview with Fox & Friends. "You know, many of them [include] warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation. We can't exclude those as a culprit, and those are the kind of studies that we're doing."

Kennedy's announcement comes one day after a transgender shooter opened fire at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, killing two children and injuring 18 others, including 15 children.

Right now it isn't clear if the shooter, Robin Westman, was on any kind of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). 

During his own confirmation hearing earlier this year, Kennedy said some antidepressants could be more addictive than heroin. 

"I know people, including members of my family, who've had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off of heroin," he said, according to Newsweek.