I suffer from DESNOS (chronic ptsd) (more from the panic/psychosomatic and dissociative side of the symptom spectrum than the depression or lack of anger control side) and have tried lots of SSRI and one NASSA (fluoxetine, sertraline, mirtazapin, citalopram), from a few days to 2-3 weeks, and felt so much worse than before, I really thought "this is the end" a lot of times, side effects, panic, pains, dissocative symptoms increased a lot and a became very aggressive and near-suicidal (which I both wasn`t beforehand) so I ceased taking them.

I tried St.John Wort (600mg/day for 2 months), which worked ok and had no side effects on me but increased insomnia and aggression, but even those effects made me want to taper off, which I did subsequently.

I have to add that I do hours of training (dancer) every day, and with the meds this was no longer possible.

And the dance training, relaxation and Body-Centering techniques (Body-Mind-Centering, Ideokinesis, Dance - Imagination) and T'ai Chi Ch'uan, which I all do daily (mostly), does more to help my symptoms than anything else I ever heard or did - I can only recommend these, although it may be difficult at first, but it does more in creating your own (not traumatized) body image, to replace the traumatized one, that you can possibly imagine.

So I only had a very short med experience and now use the above training and techniques, together with a DBT group (Dialectic-behavioral-therapy,invented by Marsha Linehan, only empirically validated successful therapy for individuals diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, very much recommended for DESNOS/complex PTSD fyi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavioral_therapy), which I can also not recommend enough, and am looking forward to starting cognitive behavioral (1-one-1) therapy soon.