Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday said the federal government will launch its first large-scale studies into the possible connection between psychiatric medication and mass shootings in the United States.

Kennedy’s remarks came during a joint press conference in Texas with Governor Greg Abbott, where the two were discussing rural hospitals.

His comments followed the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting earlier this week, in which Robin Westman killed two children and injured 17 others before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“I certainly consider mass shootings a health crisis, and we are doing for the first time, real studies to find out what the ideology of that is,” Kennedy said.

“And we’re looking for the first time at psychiatric drugs.”

Kennedy emphasized that firearms have long been part of American life, but that the rise of mass shootings is a relatively recent phenomenon.

“Americans have had guns in this country forever. When I was a kid, we had shooting clubs at our school. People, kids, my classmates, other people, would bring a .22 rifle with them at school and park it in the parking lot. Nobody was shooting,” he said.

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He noted that other nations with high levels of gun ownership do not face the same pattern of mass violence.

“There’s never been a time in America — in the history of humanity — when people walked into a crowd, into a church or a movie theater or a school … and just started randomly shooting. It’s happening in our country. It’s not happening around the world, and there are many other countries that have comparable levels of guns that we have in this country,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy argued that the change cannot be explained simply by access to firearms, pointing instead to what he described as the overuse of psychiatric prescriptions.

“We had comparable levels [of guns in America] in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, and people weren’t doing that. Something changed, and it dramatically changed human behavior. And one of the culprits we need to examine is whether the fact that we are the most overmedicated nation in the world, and [that] a lot of those are psychiatric drugs that have black box warnings on them that warn of suicidal and … homicidal ideation, so we are doing those studies.”

Kennedy said the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee the research, with a focus on whether psychiatric drugs contribute to violent outcomes in ways not fully understood.

He stressed that while many families rely on medications, the studies will provide scientific data to determine whether these prescriptions could be linked to dangerous side effects.

The secretary described the initiative as a way to replace anecdotal accounts with verifiable evidence. “We are doing those studies,” he said, adding that the government’s role is to ensure public safety while evaluating whether health practices are contributing to the crisis.

🚨 BREAKING: RFK Jr. says HHS will be launching studies into SSRIs following the the Minneapolis Catholic School shooting

“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… pic.twitter.com/CnRAwkkOdq

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 28, 2025

The discussion has gained urgency after the Minneapolis attack. Authorities confirmed that Westman, who identified as transgender, used three firearms that were all purchased legally before the shooting.

Investigators also recovered writings in which Westman expressed regret over medical and personal decisions and described struggles with mental health.

Governor Abbott did not directly comment on the study initiative during the press conference but voiced support for examining the broader causes of mass violence.

The federal review announced by Kennedy will be the first of its kind.

It aims to determine whether psychiatric medication, now widely prescribed in the United States, may have unintended consequences that overlap with the rise in mass shootings.

Kennedy called the issue a “health crisis” and said his department will pursue the findings with urgency.