Last week, RFK Jr. announced that he was encouraging mental healthcare providers to “deprescribe” antidepressants in an effort to limit their broad use. Considering that around one in six Americans use some form of SSRI medication to manage anxiety and depression, it’s probably worth lots of study.
He’s not asking for studies. He’s already studied the issue (on the internet). He’s convinced that antidepressants are bad (he blamed them for school shootings. No joke).
But something that most observers aren’t seeing is the connection between this move against life-saving antidepressants and the white Christian nationalist war against women.
Andra Watkins heard RFK Jr.’s announcement and heard the echoes of an old English legal doctrine called coverture. Under coverture, a married couple was considered a single person, and that single person was the husband. A wife was, essentially, the man's property. If the husband died, her ownership transferred to her brother or back to her father or another close male in her circle. If she protested this arrangement, she could be locked in the attic or even institutionalized.
The project of coverture, like the white Christian nationalist project, was to control women for the benefit of men.
