On May 4, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched a sweeping action plan targeting psychiatric overprescribing. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled the initiative at a MAHA Institute summit on mental health and overmedicalization. The plan aims to promote appropriate psychiatric prescribing and encourage deprescribing when clinically indicated. Notably, the announcement places a strong emphasis on children’s mental health and the overuse of psychiatric medications in that population.
What HHS Announced and Why It Matters
Secretary Kennedy framed the initiative as a direct response to America’s mental health crisis. “Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation’s mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications — especially among children,” he said. The plan calls for supporting patient autonomy, requiring informed consent, and advancing shared decision-making between providers and patients. Furthermore, it signals a broader shift in the federal standard of care toward prevention, transparency, and holistic mental health approaches.
HHS agencies will work collectively to evaluate prescription patterns for psychiatric medications. Their goal is to assess both the benefits and potential harms of these drugs, while elevating evidence-based nonmedication treatments as viable alternatives. Consequently, this initiative touches nearly every federal health agency involved in mental health policy.
Key Components of the HHS Action Plan
Dear Colleague Letter to Providers
As part of the rollout, HHS issued a Dear Colleague Letter directed at healthcare providers across the country. The letter urges clinicians to prioritize informed consent and shared decision-making with their patients. It also encourages regular review of the risks and benefits of psychiatric medications throughout a patient’s treatment journey — at initiation, during ongoing care, and when discontinuation comes under consideration.
In addition, the letter highlights nonmedication treatment options. These include family support, psychotherapy, nutrition guidance, and physical activity. Providers can also find billing code information within the letter. Specifically, these codes support reimbursement for delivering evidence-based nonmedication treatments in clinical practice.
CMS Deprescribing Guidance for Clinicians
Alongside the Dear Colleague Letter, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released new guidance for physicians and other practitioners. This guidance addresses how clinicians can receive payment under Medicare for time spent helping patients discontinue psychiatric medications. Moreover, it directs providers to widely recognized deprescribing resources. These include professional society guidelines, peer-reviewed deprescribing protocols, and FDA instructions for structured taper schedules.
Upcoming Milestones in the Plan’s Rollout
SAMHSA Webinars and Prescribing Trend Report
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration will take several concrete steps in the months ahead. First, SAMHSA will release a report on psychiatric prescribing trends. This report will inform future efforts to reduce inappropriate prescribing across care settings. Additionally, SAMHSA will host a series of educational webinars in June and July for prescribers and other health professionals. These sessions will cover adverse effects of psychiatric medications, approaches to deprescribing, and evidence-based nonmedication treatment options.
Over the summer, SAMHSA and the Health Resources and Services Administration will jointly host a webinar specifically for Federally Qualified Health Center providers. That session will focus on holistic care, nonmedication treatments, and guidance on deprescribing and tapering psychiatric medications when clinically appropriate.
July Technical Expert Panel
In July, HHS plans to convene a Technical Expert Panel on psychiatric prescribing. This panel will gather input from a broad group of stakeholders. Participants will include health professionals, patients, family members, government agencies, and professional societies. Together, they will help shape formal HHS clinical guidance on the appropriate use of psychiatric medications. The guidance will also address tapering and discontinuation protocols to support safe transitions off these drugs.
Understanding Overprescribing and Deprescribing
To understand this initiative, it helps to define the core terms. Overprescribing occurs when clinicians prescribe medications to patients who may not need them. This can mean prescribing before trying nonmedication interventions, continuing a drug longer than necessary, or maintaining a treatment that no longer proves effective for the patient.
Deprescribing, meanwhile, does not mean abandoning patients who need medication. Rather, it involves thoughtfully discontinuing or tapering treatments that show insufficient benefit or cause tolerability problems that outweigh their efficacy. Dr. Joseph F. Goldberg, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, put it simply: if any treatment fails to prove beneficial, it makes sense to discontinue it and replace it with a more effective alternative. He also stressed that both overprescribing and underprescribing deserve clinical concern in equal measure.
APA and AFSP Push Back on the Framing
The American Psychiatric Association acknowledged some alignment with the administration’s goals. However, its president, Dr. Theresa Miskimen Rivera, sharply challenged the plan’s central framing. She stated that the mental health crisis does not stem primarily from overmedicalization. Instead, she pointed to persistent workforce shortages, limited psychiatric beds, inadequate appointment time, barriers to psychotherapy and social support, and insufficient integration of psychiatric expertise in primary care as the real drivers of the crisis.
“This oversimplification of our mental health does not take into account things like persistent workforce shortages, limited psychiatric beds,” Rivera noted. Thus, the APA insists that deprescribing alone falls short as a solution to the larger systemic problem.
Separately, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention raised a distinct safety concern. The AFSP cautioned that noncollaborative or abrupt deprescribing may trigger symptom relapse and elevate suicide risk. Therefore, the foundation emphasized individualized clinical assessment, patient-centered communication, and close follow-up as essential safeguards.
What Clinicians and Patients Should Know
For clinicians, this plan signals a shift in how federal agencies will evaluate and support psychiatric prescribing. Providers should review the CMS guidance, explore available billing codes for nonmedication treatments, and watch for SAMHSA’s upcoming webinar schedule.
For patients, the key message is equally clear: do not stop psychiatric medications on your own. Dr. Rivera stressed that discontinuing these drugs without physician involvement carries serious risks, including side effects and condition relapse. Any concerns about current medications deserve a conversation with a qualified clinician — not independent action.
