Zoloft - Drug Description

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Compulsions: These are actions or thoughts that a person does over and over again to get rid of their unwanted thoughts. They believe this will help prevent something terrible from happening. These repeated actions may take hours to perform and can interfere with daily life.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

People with PTSD suffer from symptoms because they suffered, witnessed or learned of a life-threatening event or other serious event and felt intense fear, helplessness or horror because of the event.

A person with PTSD must have one or more symptoms from each of the following categories for at least a month and these symptoms must seriously interfere with being able to lead a normal life.

Reliving the event through upsetting thoughts, nightmares or flashbacks, or having very strong mental and physical reactions if something reminds the person of the event.

Avoiding activities, thoughts, feelings or conversations that remind the person of the event; feeling numb to one’s surroundings; or being unable to remember details of the event. Having a loss of interest in important activities, feeling all alone, being unable to have normal emotions or feeling that there is nothing to look forward to in the future may also be experienced.

Feeling that one can never relax and must be on guard all the time to protect oneself, trouble sleeping, feeling irritable, overreacting when startled, angry outbursts or trouble concentrating. ZOLOFT is approved to treat PTSD in both men and women. More women than men experience PTSD. There were three times more women than men in ZOLOFT PTSD clinical studies, and in these studies women responded better to ZOLOFT than men. What this means to the treatment of a patient is unknown. Only a doctor can determine if ZOLOFT is right for a patient.

Everyone has a normal substance in the brain called serotonin. It is thought that not having enough serotonin may contribute to depression, panic disorder, OCD and PTSD. How ZOLOFT works for all of these conditions is not known. What is known is that ZOLOFT may help correct the chemical imbalance of serotonin in the brain. This helps relieve your symptoms. It may take several weeks for your symptoms to get better.