Singulair and wellbutrin

My daughter, a happy, stable 13 year old had been taking Singulair for many years for her allergies. Last summer she suffered deep depression with symptoms including self-mutilation ans suicidal ideation. She had to be hospitalized and is now on anti-depressants and in outpatient treatment. I stopped her Singulair as soon as I read the stories at the end of March.

In response to Concernedcitizen with regard to the additional medications prescribed, we never got that far, but we were close. My son, as I've mentioned on here before (sorry for the repetition, but I think it's important), was about to be diagnosed as bipolar, which would no doubt have led to a whole host of other drugs.

Also, I totally agree with concernedcitizen with regard to not necessarily blaming our doctors. We should expect them to listen to us and take our concerns seriously, though. My son's first pediatricians were dismissive and condescending. We switched doctors and when I handed the new doctors a printout of all the posts from this site (back in 2005), they looked skeptical, but guess what? They READ it. And, my son's primary pediatrician has since told me that he's taken several kids off Singulair based on our story and the posts he read. The research provided her by concernedcitizen is INVALUABLE. If enough doctors see this stuff they'll start to question it and at least look at some of these children differently. Rather than throwing a prescription for Ritalin at them or stuffing them full of wellbutrin/abilify/lithium/klonopin/cymbalta/ they might think, "Hey, this kid's on Singulair...maybe we should try taking him/her off for a while to see what happens."

Finally, I wanted to put it out there that while kids may show mild side effects in the beginning (so mild that they can be dismissed in one way or another) I, personally, believe that with this drug side effects intensify over a period of time. My son, for example, was highly functional on singulair in the beginning and it completely eradicated his asthma and allergy symptoms, so it was great. Over time the side effects were more numerous and increasingly intense. Finally it got to the point where we couldn't dismiss it as bad behavior anymore, it was just completely outrageous behavior and my instinct told me it HAD to be the singulair. So these case studies that look at kids over a 24 week period are useless. In 24 weeks my son was fine. 52 weeks? Totally different child.

Definitely use the info provided on here, it will help not only your child, but other children as well.

This is in answer to concernedcitizen. My son, when he began to have behavior issues, was placed on Tegretol, Wellbutrin, and Abilify. He could not tolerate the Tegretol. So he stopped that. His "depression" seemed better so they took him off the Wellbutrin, he continues to be on the Abilify. We tried to take him off of that once, it wasn't pretty. His anger, frustration, rage, crying, depression, etc all came back....of course he was still taking the Singulair. (little did we know then....) We see his neurologist very soon. I am going to ask about trying again to remove the Abilify. My son is 7. He was started on these meds 4 months after having surgery to remove a cyst in his brain....we thought all the problems were just who he had become after having brain surgery. It was very depressing. I read all of your research with great interest. I had thought it had to be a something in the brain being triggered. My son had a tendency toward these things due to the location of his cyst....we had the "luxury" of knowing he would have behavior problems. So did his doctors.... Now with all the research it would seem someone like my son, who has a cyst in the left temporal lobe (a region that controls behavior) should not have EVER been placed on a medicine like Singulair. At the very least, he should have been taken off that medicine, before being placed on anti-psychotics. Good Grief. Thanks again for all your work. I will be taking some of the literature with me to the Dr. As I am sure others on this board will.
By the way - My son has been off Singulair for 10 days now. He is a very happy boy. Downright giddy. He is annoying his sister to no end. Dad and I are enjoying every blissful minute.

To answer you concernedcitizen, what a great question,yes after singulair started, within 18mths we were prescribed,an antidepressant began with a c but cant rember, when that failed went on to lexapro,when that failed wellbutrin,when that failed and i was done with the bull chit we were trying bio feed back,cant say i was a big believer but we were giving it a try,of course nothing was going to work as long as we were taking singulair.These were all prescribed by psych docs

Wow. I can't even express how blown away I am by all of this.My son is 7 and has been on singulair since he was 2. He was moved to the 5 mg last year in March. The only difference between my son and all of your stories is that when he was in kindergarten we discovered a rather large arachnoid cyst in his brain that had to be drained. It was easy to blame some if not all of his behavioral problems on the location of the cyst. It is in the left temperol lobe. Having something in that region of the brain can cause behavior problems. His cyst was also big enough to push on his pituitary gland making him think he needed to use the bathroom all the time. He had a slight case of diabetes insipidus. During all of this he was complaining of headaches, fatigue, leg pain, the boy could not walk from one end of the mall to the other, he would melt down at the slightest provocation and turn into an angry little monster at around diner time. We attributed it to low sodium levels messing with his head, but his blood work never reflected someone who was THAT bad. After his surgery he had some normal depression, but in March, four months after, he became a different person. He was full of rage and anger and almost got kicked out of school. He broke things at home and lashed out at people, he said awful things. He was put on Tegretol, (that made him very sick) and Wellbutrin. Since he couldn't tolerate the tegretol they switched him to abilify. He still takes this. The one time we tried to take him off he went completely nuts again. Same kind of aggressive behavior, lashing out, no self control, crying all the time, very moody, saying things like "nobody loves me." My son is the sweetest person you will ever know. Before all of this, he would melt your heart with his kind words. Now he has been diagnosed with ADD, Aspergers, and has all of one friend at school. I go every day to eat lunch with him so he doesn't have to sit alone. I completely understand that my son will continue to have problems once this medicine is out of his system, because he does have other issues, but this morning the first thing he said to me was, "Mom it's weird, I don't know why but I feel so happy."
He has been off the Singulair for 6 days now. I called his allergist and he was VERY interested in all of this and wants to meet with me. He has always been so heartbroken by how my son has struggled. Don't think all doctors are bad. This one isn't. He is going to help me report all of this. He is really upset too. Of course he is older, been around for ever. I don't know. He cares about his patients. His receptionist said she thought they would be getting a ton of calls about this and I was the only one. Hang in there everyone. Alone we are quite together we are LOUD.

1st insomnia, then depression and anxiety. I got to the point where I couldn't stand being at work because I was shaky and felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. I went out on disability and was started on Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Valium & Lunesta. It got worse and now, 6 months later I still don't feel right. I heard about the side effects of Singulair and immediately stopped it. I haven't taken it in 2 nights and am hoping for the best. Wouldn't it be something if I lost my job, lost my friends, and my joy of life (there were many times I wanted to end it), primarily due to Singulair?

I'm a 35 yr male and have been dealing with depression/anxiety for years due to current & past issues in my life. This post IS dealing with singulair side effects but want to give some history as to why I think it's singular and not something else. For the past 2 or so years I've been using xanax which has worked fairly well in controlling my anxiety, but my doctor preferred I stop taking it because of it's potential for abuse. I've been on SSRI's before and I hated them, so I did some research and decided to try wellbutrin which works differently from the SSRI's. I was still using xanax while ramping up on wellbutrin the end of February. To my relief, the wellbutrin started working wonderfully - felt like I could cope with life, increased energy, better mood, with no negative side effects (actually some positive ones) - the only problem I was having is I traveled during this time frame and developed a bad case of sinus rhinitis due to the climate changes. I've had chronic sinus problems my whole life so it's no surprise. I tried most otc meds and nothing was helping. In the meantime I was feeling so much better (other than the rhinitis) that I decided to start tapering myself off the xanax. When I got to the point where I'd stop taking the minimal dosage I would start getting physical withdrawal symptoms (headaches, dizziness, etc) which is fairly common after taking for a prolonged period of time. The side effects were strictly physical - no excessive anxiety or psychological craving My sinuses were still really bothering me so I had two reasons to visit the doctor - try to get something to relieve my sinuses and to get a short supply of a benzo with a longer half-life to ease the withdrawal from xanax. The doctor gave me a prescription for a month of diazepam and 9 weeks of singulair samples. That was 3 weeks ago. I immediately begin using the singulair, but still had some xanax left so I decided to continue on a minimal dosage and use it up before I went to fill my rx, which I just started several days ago. Coinciding with when I started taking the singulair, all the positive benefits I was feeling from the wellbutrin just suddenly stopped. My depression and anxiety came back worse than they were before - another persons post describes the change in me: feel very anxious, fearful, reclusive, depressed, that everything is going to go wrong, or is always wrong. I'll have extreme anxiety about small everyday things. I’m unable to concentrate. I've also become more irritable, argumentative, and aggressive. I have difficulty falling and staying asleep. I also experienced a very noticeable decrease in sexual energy after a very noticeable increase which is a side effect of wellbutrin. I can even understand the rationale for suicide just to be free of this emotional nightmare - not that I would do it - but can understand it. I couldn't figure out why I went from finally feeling good about life to suddenly feeling worse than ever before. I guess I didn't realize it right away because my sinuses were much better, but I know these symptoms began occurring very shortly after I started to take the singulair. I was trying to figure out what was going wrong with me and yesterday I did a web search on 'singulair side effects' (since it’s the only variable I could think of that changed within that time period) and came across this site and several similar ones. It blew my mind how many people were talking about the exact things I was feeling. Yesterday was my last dose. Does anybody know how long it takes for this crap to work its way out of your system after 3 weeks of use???

My son is 8 and has Autism. In the last two months he has been taking Singulair. In the last two months I have noticed him progressively getting very aggressive and unable to tolerate disappointments etc. He's been very whiney. It's to a point where he is out of control with his moods. He hauls off and hits me, other kids and adults. Like a monster has taken over. He can't seem to calm down and it's hard for him to tell me what is going on because of his Autism. He has never been this extreme and had such a long bout of horrible behavior. I forgot he had started this new medication for his allergy related asthma/wheezing. I did not figure it out but I am convinced this may have been the trigger for his uncontrollable behavior. We had a huge embarrassing incident today at camp where he ran into the school he was not suppose to be in, then came back and pushed this boy and attacked his Mom by pulling her arm nearly knocking her over, pinching her arm and squeezing it very hard! I was shocked at his behavior. Kicked and hit me and the counselor and squeezed my boob really hard,lifted my shirt up several times, just totally out of control. I had to lay on him practically to control him and I cried in shock and fear and wondered if this was my son! It took a long time to calm him down. He is going off the medication today and we are talking to several other doctors and going to a neurologist. He has sleepless nights too and dry mouth. Please watch out if you already have a child with issues. Worried and sad Mom!