Michael Barbaro

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Daily.

In his latest public health crusade, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

is asking why millions of Americans have been taking psychiatric drugs for far longer than ever intended.

I've been on them longer than I've not been on them.

In the process, he's highlighting an open secret in medicine.

that doctors are much better at starting drug treatments than at stopping them.

I did not know that I was going to be on them for the rest of my life.

And that patients who want to end their treatment are increasingly taking matters into their own hands.

Today, Ellen Berry takes us inside the growing movement to deprescribe.

It's Monday, June 22nd.

Ellen, nice to have you on the show.

Let me just start by asking how you came to this topic of deprescribing.

And for the uninitiated, can you just define that phrase?

Huh.

Is that true?

Right.

And here he is assailing and questioning the most widely used medication in basically all of mental health.

So he's beginning to articulate a kind of federal regulatory vision for deprescription.

What specifically is he proposing?