Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that it’s time to start asking tough questions about what’s at the heart of mass shootings and appeared to connect the violence to what he called a “mental health crisis.”
“We really do have, I think, a mental health crisis in the United States of America. We take way more psychiatric medication than any other nation on Earth, and I think it’s time for us to start asking some very hard questions about the root causes of this violence,” Vance said at an event in Wisconsin in his first public remarks about Wednesday’s church shooting in neighboring Minnesota, in which two children were killed.
In an interview Thursday on Fox News, Vance called the shooter a “mentally deranged human being.”
Earlier in the day, in a separate Fox News interview, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he has the National Institutes of Health looking into links between violence and antidepressants that are regularly prescribed to millions of people in the United States.
“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 violence,” Kennedy said.
He didn’t offer specifics about the research, when and how it would be conducted or whether results would be peer-reviewed. The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.
SSRI is short for a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The antidepressants increase levels of serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain that can improve mood. Common versions include Lexapro, Prozac and Zoloft, which treat conditions like depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Thursday on MSNBC that he doesn’t have any information about any previous mental illness of the shooter, identified as Robin Westman, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. O’Hara added that Westman, 23, was never confined for mental illness.
There’s also no indication from authorities that the shooter took SSRIs or any other related medication.
Blaming antidepressants for mass shootings has become a common tactic for some conservatives. In 2022, after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and the shooting at the July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Illinois, some were quick to speculate without evidence about antidepressant use by the shooters.
A 2019 study found that most school shooters hadn’t taken psychotropic medications and that when they did, “no direct or causal association was found” with the shootings.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., ripped Kennedy for his comments a day after the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School’s church.
“I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bulls—,” she wrote on X. “You should be fired.”
Kennedy is a longtime critic of SSRIs, and he has spoken out about what he sees as overuse and overprescribing of the drugs. He has also previously blamed the drugs for school shootings, despite evidence to the contrary.
Mental health advocacy groups have also spoken out against Kennedy’s criticisms of SSRIs, saying that the drugs can be lifesaving by mitigating thoughts of suicide and that they can help people with severe depression or anxiety function on a daily basis and maintain social relationships.
“I know the secretary of health and human services this morning said that HHS is investigating, perhaps, links between some of these drugs and these prescription drugs that some of these minors may be taking and an increase in violence,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at Thursday’s briefing.
“And obviously we have mental health problems in this country that this administration and Secretary Kennedy will continue to speak out about and the work that we’re doing to solve it,” she added.
President Donald Trump hasn’t made any public remarks about the Minneapolis shooting. He posted about it on social media Wednesday, calling it a “terrible situation,” and asked that people “join me in praying for everyone involved!”
He also called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to offer his condolences and ordered that flags be flown at half-staff.
Democrats have long argued that easy access to guns and lax gun laws in some states have fueled the epidemic of mass shootings. Trump over the years has focused on mental health issues and school security in talking about gun violence.