Zapping Zits Can Be a Real Downer

Every adult knows that zits are the bane of the teen years. 

Today’s Mom’s Talk takes a look at worries that have resurfaced in news reports in recent weeks questioning whether, with one popular anti-pimple pill, the cure may be worse than the complaint.

Before taking the drug Accutane, people now have to sign an informed consent form related to the drug's side effects. The consent form is the upshot of  2001 congressional hearings and a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee meeting on Accutane's possible emotional impacts.

Those hearings came when one high-profile dad—Rep. Bart Stupak, D-MI—demanded them after his own 17-year-old son took his own life while on Accutane in 1999.

"Although it is difficult to make a reasonable linkage (between suicide and the drug), the agency is compelled to do something because the outcome … is so serious," an FDA spokeswoman told reporters at the time of the hearings. "It seemed prudent to inform patients and prescribers if one suicide could be prevented, if someone became aware of the risk."

News that Florida teen Charles Bishop might have used the acne medication Accutane before he slammed a stolen airplane into a Tampa skyscraper in 2002 fueled doubts about the safety of the anti-acne drug.

Skeptics say children with severe acne problems have other reasons to be depressed. It’s not easy to get into the "it" crowd with a pimple problem. Teens with acne might be socially ostracized on the mild end of the social scale. On the extreme end, they might wind up on the receiving side of teasing and bullying.