Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a team to study the use of antidepressants, antipsychotics and obesity medications in children, claiming these medications may cause a “threat” to adolescents.

The order called for the formation of the Make America Healthy Again commission — to be chaired by Kennedy — with an aim to understand chronic diseases.

Among the goals of the commission is to “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.”

Kennedy has been critical of these medications in the past, falsely linking the use of antidepressants to school shootings.

Additionally, Kennedy has focused on improving health and nutrition, with unfounded claims that weight loss medications are used to treat obesity in very young children and that the obesity epidemic in the United States could be cured with “good food.”

Psychiatrists and obesity experts tell ABC News that Kennedy and the Trump administration may be missing some context in how antidepressants — and other drugs used to treat mental health conditions and obesity medications are prescribed.

These experts — along with the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association — have said these medications are safe and effective and are usually coupled with other forms of treatment. They also state that each patient should consult with their physician before taking any prescribed medications.

“As somebody who studies pediatric chronic diseases, I think the intent to focus on childhood chronic diseases and the crisis around them is a really good one,” Dr. Justin Ryder, an associate professor of surgery and pediatrics at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and vice chair of research for the department of surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, told ABC News.

“There really are some things that I read in [the order] that gave me some hope, but then there’s obviously some things in here that gave me some pause and some concern,” he said.

“The focus on medical treatments as a source of exacerbating chronic diseases, I don’t think necessarily is really great,” Ryder said, adding that these medications are helpful rather than harmful.

What we know about antidepressant use in kids

A class of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are among the most commonly used to treat children.

Evidence suggests that SSRIs are effective in treating anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder in children, according to a 2019 study from Yale University.

Additionally, there are currently six atypical, or second-generation, antipsychotics that are FDA-approved for use in children and adolescents. They are generally considered safe but come with strict dosing guidelines.

“With SSRIs, they’re very safe treatments, as are many of our antipsychotics, so they may have some side effects,” Dr. Joseph Saseen, associate dean for clinical affairs and a professor in the departments of clinical pharmacy and family medicine at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado, told ABC News.

The executive order also mentioned stimulants, which is a class of medications used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

“The case of stimulants is a little different for their approved indication,” Saseen said. “They are considered safe and efficacious, but they do have the potential for addiction and are most of them that are stimulants are controlled substances.”

He went on, “Overall, anything that’s approved by the FDA is considered a safe and effective treatment. None of these are new. Sometimes we get a new kind of drug, but we’re not dealing with a novel drug class where we don’t know what to expect.”

Dr. Asim Shah, a professor and executive vice chair of psychiatry and behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said the potential for addiction is less likely when people are given the right dosages with the right diagnosis.

He added that medications for mental health conditions go through robust development, testing, clinical trials and review process before they enter the market.

Additionally, before medications are approved in children, they typically need to be shown to be safe and effective in adults first, Shah said.

He added that these drugs are usually given to children only after other treatments are tried first.

“When we think about medication in kids, remember the best treatment in kids is medication plus therapy plus a whole treatment regime,” Shah told ABC News. “We’re not talking about just giving medication to kids. That doesn’t work alone. There is a whole treatment protocol. Just throwing medications at anybody is not the answer.”

Shah and Saseen agreed that using the term “threat” in the executive order might imply that these medications are unsafe and said that the benefits are not being considered.

“I think using the word ‘threat’ comes from people that aren’t in the medical field, because that is not a medical term that we would use,” Saseen said. “We would use the terms risk versus benefit. ‘Threat’ is a non-medical professional term. It is a social term. It is a polarizing term that may just unduly bias the way that we would look at any assessment.”

Kennedy and others have also been criticized for allegedly spreading misinformation about antidepressants.

During his confirmation hearings in late January, Kennedy falsely suggested that antidepressants were harder to quit 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,” Kennedy during the hearing.

Shah and Saseen said there is no evidence that equates ending the use of antidepressants to ending the use of heroin.

“I know of no evidence because I don’t think it exists,” Saseen said. “I think those are extremely different diseases. I think that really is demoralizing to patients who have serious mental health disorders, and that’s problematic. We already have a problem with a stigma, with mental health and language like this. Maybe there’s good intentions behind it, but the negative effects are really bad.”

Additionally, in a 2023 livestream on X with Elon Musk, Kennedy falsely claimed there is “tremendous circumstantial evidence” that people using antidepressants were more likely to commit school shootings.

Shah said there is no evidence to suggest that patients with mental health disorders, or those who are on medications for disorders, are more likely to be violent.

“Less than 5% of people who have mental health issues would end up being violent,” Shah said. “That’s a very low number compared to general population. That’s a myth, in other words.”

“Violence can be with anybody,” he added. “The biggest concern of violence in mental health is people who are untreated mental health patients. So we need to destigmatize mental illness. We need to treat mental illness effectively. We need to provide free treatment, affordable care. We need to provide care to people who are underserved, uninsured, without any boundaries.”

Weight loss medications coupled with other treatments

There are currently six drugs approved by the FDA to treat overweight and obesity: orlistat, phentermine-topiramate, naltrexone-bupropion, liraglutide, semaglutide and tirzepatide — the latter two known by the brand names Wegovy and Zepbound.

Four of these medications are approved for children ages 12 and older with a fifth medication approved to treat children ages 6 years and older who have rare genetic disorders causing obesity.

Kennedy has made childhood nutrition a cornerstone of his platform and has previously said that if the country paid more for quality food, it would solve the obesity crisis “overnight.”

During his second confirmation hearing last month, Kennedy said obesity medications should not be the “first front-line intervention for 6-year-old kids” which he alleged without evidence was “the standard of practice now.”

Ryder said this is not the standard of practice, explaining that these medications are prescribed in conjunction with proper nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.

“Obesity medications are not given in a vacuum,” Ryder said. “Same thing with bariatric surgery. They always accompany nutritional advice, behavioral counseling, physical activity advice. It could be very intensive.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that medications be a part of the conversation for overweight children and young teens — not the only solution, Ryder pointed out.

“Obesity medications do not solve obesity by themselves,” he said. “They are an additional tool to help people on their weight loss journey. But they, by themselves, will not make you lose weight unless you are doing the things that you need to do: eating right, controlling your portion size, getting physical activity. The medications help with this.”