After newly sworn-in president Donald Trump signed a controversial new executive order impacting children’s access to psychiatric medication this week, a handful of horrified US residents have spoken out.
The Republican leader announced the introduction of a new campaign, titled the ‘Make America Healthy Again Commission’, yesterday (19 Feb), which would focus on the wellbeing of American children, with a specific focus on mental health and illness.
The commission – which will be chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr (the US Health and Human Services Secretary) – calls for ‘drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease’.
It vows to do so by ‘assessing the threat that potential over-utilisation of medication’, ‘certain chemicals’, and ‘certain other exposures’ pose to children.
78-year-old Trump’s new order also pledges to ‘assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilisers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs’.
The policy states that, in 100 days’ time, the new commission must submit a report regarding prescriptions of these such medications.
80 days after that, a strategy which includes recommendations must be filed to the federal government.
As we say, however, Trump’s latest campaign hasn’t gone down too well with many Americans, with a handful of healthcare professionals having since spoken out against it.
Among them is Dr. Lelach Rave – interim executive director of the Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics – who emphasised that mental health and illness medications are often life-saving.
Speaking to The Seattle Times, Dr. Rave explained: “Any parent who has a child who is struggling with depression or anxiety or psychosis, it’s a scary place to be.
Several healthcare professionals have now spoken out (Natalia Lebedinskaia/Getty)Several healthcare professionals have now spoken out (Natalia Lebedinskaia/Getty)
Several healthcare professionals have now spoken out (Natalia Lebedinskaia/Getty)
“And there’s a lot of harm that goes with having untreated illness.”
