I know there is no official link between Singulair and depression, let me tell you my brother Tom's experience.

Four years ago he had a terrible asthma attack. We really thought that we were going to lose him. He was only 11 years old at the time. He was in the hospital for about a month, his lungs began to fill up with fluid and they had to induce a coma. It was very touch go for about two weeks. They had him on a number of prescription drugs during his stay. One of those drugs was the prescription drug Singulair. When he finally came out a hospital one month later he had been on Singulair or about three weeks. The doctors had told us that he is asthmatic and would need to be on Singulair and also some steroid that I really can't remember the name of at this time.

We were so very grateful that the doctors saved his life, but we noticed something very strange. He came out of the hospital a totally different Child. He cried constantly, he had nightmares, he was hallucinating. We did not know what the hell was going on with him. So we took him back to the doctor. They told us it was very normal for a child to experience depression after a traumatic event. OK so we thought he would get over it. Well we were wrong.

Six months later he began to get worse. He was afraid to go to sleep, and he was terrified of school. Getting him up in the morning was not easy to do. When we were finally able to wake him up everything seemed OK, but 5 minutes before the bus came he would go into these panic attacks. It would just break your heart. We tried to drive him to school drop him off and hope everything would be OK, that once he got into school the tears would stop. Well they didn't stop, and it just got worse. He would go down to the principal's office and beg to sit in her office all day. For some reason he was terrified of being around all the other children.

The school than approached us offering to have him home schooled. At this point we really had no choice the panic attacks were everyday, and he was learning nothing. You could imagine at this point we all were feeling lost and helpless.

So for two years we had him home schooled. It worked well but in my opinion is not a substitute for the real thing. Children need that social interaction with their peers.

One morning I was sitting having my morning coffee and watching the news. They had a short blurb on the TV about Singulair saying that they were researching possible links between Singulair and suicide, and also depression. After I heard that my world went into a tailspin. I immediately called my doctor and he advised me to take Matt off of Singulair right away. So I did.

Now come to find out Merck had known about the side effects the whole time and never conveyed the information. Within three days of Matthew being off of Singulair he was back to his normal self. I was stunned that it was that easy! Now came the anger. Why we were not told of these side effects? This child lost 3 years of his life sitting in the house in fear, wanting to die.

So how is he doing now? Well he is back in school, he has straight A's, he is happier then I have ever seen him.

I'm not trying to bash this prescription drug, or have it pulled off of the shelf, I just want information to flow freely, and not be held up because pharmaceutical companies do not want to hurt their bottom line.