Overdiagnosis, overmedication and withdrawal: that's the bleak picture of US mental-health treatment painted at a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) wellness summit attended by US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the driving force behind the MAHA movement. The summit, which was held on 4 May in Washington DC, focused on what the group argues is the widespread overuse of drugs to treat mental-health conditions. Some speakers described agonizing withdrawal symptoms when they tried to wean off antidepressants. Others attacked what they characterized as an overdiagnosis of mental-health disorders in children. 'Our goal is straightforward: to reduce unnecessary dependence on medication, to improve patient outcomes and to return control to the patients,' Kennedy said at the summit, which was hosted by the MAHA Institute, a think tank in Washington DC that champions Kennedy's work. 'This is how we're going to make America healthy again.' The MAHA movement focuses on chronic disease,...
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