RFK Jr. makes odd aside: 'I'm around a lot of young girls all the time'

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raised eyebrows this week on his government podcast, "The Secretary Kennedy Podcast," when he veered into an unsolicited observation about the mental health of teenage girls — and how often he's apparently around them.

"I'm around a lot of young girls all the time, and they all seem, like, really crazy at that part of their lives," Kennedy said during an episode titled "The Truth About Psychiatric Drugs." "Most of them just get through it and figure it out. But if you put them on a regimen of psychiatric drugs at that age, they may not be able to go through the things that they need to go through."

Kennedy made the remarks in conversation with Laura Delano, author of the memoir Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance and founder of the Inner Compass Initiative, a nonprofit that helps patients navigate leaving the mental health system. Delano spent over a decade cycling through 19 psychiatric medications before concluding the treatment itself was harming her.

Delano validated Kennedy's comments.

"It's such a true observation," she said, arguing that the mental health industry has filled a void left by a generation of young women hungry for meaning — and that psychiatric diagnoses have become a kind of identity, even a "badge of honor."

Kennedy launched the podcast in April, billing it as "a new era of radical transparency in government." But critics have warned that the show — produced out of an HHS-branded studio — risks using the imprimatur of the nation's top health official to further erode federal health agencies' long-held reputation as a "safe harbor for information," as Georgetown public health law expert Lawrence Gostin put it.

Kennedy oversees agencies including the FDA and NIH, which regulate the psychiatric drugs he cast doubt on during the episode.