im going to reply to this and another thread. Obviously each person reacts differently but they should start you on a lower dose before increasing, i personally never had any side effects with sertraline except for a bit of an upset stomach for a couple of days while your stomach gets used to it. The main thing though is that i do not recommend Sertraline, it's been bad for me and i told the doc i wanted off it. It seemed to lock me into my routines more and overall made my autism worse. I really feel that the chemicals inside sertraline do not effect the areas needed. It's a medicine given to a whole range of things and i don't feel it is specific enough to be effective and could well make you worse. Citalopram worked well for me, much more of a happy pill and i found it had a positive effect, in that i found it much easier to let things go when usually i get stuck on things, it goes over and over in my mind and i can't stop it, like if something is wrong or someone has done something wrong or stupid. On citalopram it was much easier to let it go, like the chemicals in them somehow let you release the steam rather than it building up and going round and round inside your head,so i feel that Citalopram has more effective chemicals inside it that effects autistic symptoms in a more positive way. The doc wants me to try prozac, so i'll give it a go but i wont go back to sertraline.
The difference was so noticeable that i want to find out what different chemicals are in Cit that aren't in Sert and try to study more into them and try to see which ones might be responsible for helping my brain to relax more and let things go