My daughter had been on singulair from the time she was 8 yrs old...

You are not a horrible mom ,just a mom who did not get the information she so deserved!My son took his life afte being on SINGULAIR 17 DAYS ,myself and my husband thought his mood swings were from being overtired.I felt like the worse parent in the world at first but ,now I know I am not alone.This information should have been out to the physicians long before children start suffering, completing or attempting suicide.Report your daughters side effects to the FDA ,please do this and ask your doctor to do the same.Dont count on just your doctor to do this,they are not obligated by law to report, only by conscience.Good Luck Kate Miller

You are not a bad parent for assuming her behavior was part of her personality. I did the same thing with my son for years. I can imagine that many of we parents did. Or thought it was just a stage our kids would grow out of. I used to get so exasperated and angry with my son. So many times I thought he was just a bull headed brat with a temper from hell. Occasionally I would get glimpses of a sweet little boy but they were so few and far in between. Things have changed since he has been off Singulair. We are seeing his true self more and more often now.

I now feel so guilty for making the decision to put him on this drug and for not ever questioning if Singulair was causing all his problems. But, as Kate pointed out, information on all the horrible side effects of this drug was not effectively communicated to physicians OR parents. How many of us actually read the prescribing info that came with the refill every time to look for changes? And even if we had, how many of these adverse effects weren't even listed until recently? How many of us assumed our children's doctors would let us know if there was a problem with their medication? And how many doctors ever thought to connect a 2, 3, or 4 year old's temper tantrums and nightmares to a medication that the drug company promoted as safe?

This drug needs to be reevaluated for safety NOW. The problem is that studies often involve a reevaluation of the original clinical data. If the original researchers were not looking for psychiatric adverse effects, that data may not even be included in their reports. I'm wondering if clinical testing at this point is even possible. How many of us would subject our children to the ravages of Singulair again to prove our claims? I don't think I could. Adverse Event reporting to the FDA is currently the ONLY way that drugs can be monitored for post-marketing averse effects. All physicians should be REQUIRED to report, but sadly it is currently voluntary. THAT needs to be changed too.

Tragically, we can never reclaim the time lost to Singulair. But we CAN take action to prevent this from happening to other children. Make that FDA reprt and DEMAND that your child's doctor does the same.

Best wishes, J. Markle

Please do not feel guilty for putting your daughter on Singulair. My daughter also tried to sneak off of her meds and I would hound her to get back on them or she would end up in the hospital with an asthma attack. I had no idea that these very medications were causing her to become socially withdrawn, angry, depressed, and eventually she completed suicide. At first when I found out about the link to Singulair I felt SO guilty for forcing her to stay on it. Unfortunately none of these side effects were made public until three months after she died. I now blame the FDA and Merck who continue to prescribe this medication without mandating that physicians be made aware of what the side effects are, and then passing that knowledge on to patients and consumers. Please tell the FDA, your physician, and everyone that you know about your experience with this medication. Perhaps if you spread the word you can save another child's life!

There are MANY other options....Singulair is not an important drug for pediatric asthma.....it has only been proven to be moderately effective as compared to inhaled corticosteroids.

Thank you for having the courage to put up your posting. I had been dealing with the same suspicions with my teen son, been watching the internet for folks like yourself, as I finally concluded that we could not possibly be alone going through this. This experience has had life-long repercussions as the bigger he got ( 6 ft 210 pounds at 14 yrs), the more damage he could do as his depression went inward and outward in rages of violence, rarely in public, but in the home where he felt like he could let go in a safe place In public he remained relatively withdrawn after being such an outgoing happy kid in his younger years. It was amazing to watch him transform from a content boy playing the guitar, into this "monster" with mood swings that went way beyond symptoms of puberty. I sacrificed my full-time career to raise the kids, and since my son went on Singulair, have lost several jobs trying to keep up with this child, we live by our wits, NOT welfare. This has devestated our financial stability and has challenged our emotions and trust. I still cannot get any professional to see this possibility, as I am now only a barely employed dime-a-dozen "ding bat" single mother to these folks. To rock this boat further, I was informed by mental health workers that I could get brought up on child neglect charges if I removed him from this medication, no one bothered to explore the possibility and mothers' reports do not qualify as "facts" in their eyes. Apparently we have some ulterior motive or are hiding something, when we are bearing our souls, desperately in search of answers and help for our children. I've had numerous verbal threats and suggestions of repercussions around my questioning this medication, followed every protocol I was given to help him within traditional mental health and I even had my son assessed for psycho educational issues. He internalized this believing that something was "wrong" with him. These folks would not even discuss the possibility of Singulair being in the mix, and intentionally left my concerns off of their reports. As the mental health field is still Oedipal-based, it was all mom's fault, I was a "bad" parent, although those who have seen my household, know very differently. My questions were ignored in meetings as I was literally stared at with no verbal reply. I started to question and doubt myself, which made it worse for my son who was going through this and needed me to be firm and strong.

I realized that I had exhausted every medical expert, and the mental health folks kept ignoring this possiblity, so I took the plunge myself, risking child neglect charges. Having a background in mental health myself as a director of a psychiatric halfway house for older adolescents, I was cautious about removing him cold turkey. So, I reduced his doses gradually, going to every other day, then pulled him off for good. A week before I began to pull him off of the Singulair, I put him on liquid St. Johns Wort, to stabilize his mood, and eventually transferred him over to Cetirizine (aka Zyrtec). When I informed his pediatrician, she was very irrate with me, as I had questioned this med early on and she ignored my concerns for nearly THREE years. This boy has lost three years of his life to this crazy-making med, feels incredible guilt for his unexplainable moods and behavior, yet the damage has been done to this family and our home. He has been off for four months, reports feeling far more "in control" of his feelings, yet after living under this Singulair cloud for over 3 years, we are re-learning how to communicate and express feelings, something he should have been learning for those 3 years he lost. I don't think I need to explain the guilt that I feel as his parent. You've all got that down too well.

I have since switched all of the children to a D.O. whose first reaction is not necessarily to pop pills. I have my kids on a (budgeted) whole food diet, especially during the weekdays saving our treats for "junk food fridays", but have added natural anti-inflammatories that come in food form, instead of pill form. I also keep them on relatively high consistent doses of vitamin C (or liquid ascorbic acid depending on my finances), and sublingual B-complex every morning. One other note on asthma in kids, if you can get them to play an instrument such as the trumpet, or push their lungs, it seems to help clear them - my son feels better after blowing on his trumpet. He also sticks his head in the freezer and breathes deeply. Since he was a baby, I would take him out into the cold winter air at night, sometimes it worked, other times I had to use the albuterol.

I want my son to get those three years back, the damage to the rest of his family will just have to work itself out. Not every person in the medical profession is unreasonable, but there are too many "Gods" out there who get extremely irrate when we question the methods or medications. I am not a lawsuit happy person, cannot stand to deal with lawyers after 12 years working in a law office, but after being ignored, threatened and discounted for years watching this child suffer, I'd like to know if there is any litigation in the works so that I can help him catch up on his education after all that he has missed. I would be very cautious in removing a young child-teen cold turkey from this med, it may work for some, but when it leads to such devastation, someone needs to sit up and take notice. Waiting to hear from the rest of you all. I feel so good - I AM NOT ALONE!