Brief Answer: Its a common symptoms among alzheimers Detailed Answer: Hello, Thanks for choosing health care magic for posting your query. I have gone through your question in detail and I can understand what you are going through. Being combative is a very common symptom among the patients of alzheimers and it is certainly not due to sertraline. As the brain degenration continues depression, psychosis and other behavioural disturbaces are very commonly noted. Your psychiatrist is right in suggesting you sertraline as an initial drug to control behavioural disturbances. However now that the symptoms have gone bad we need to explore other options as well. There are two drugs which I commonly use among my patients and find them effective are quetiapine or risperidone. Both these drugs are started at their lowest doses viz 25 mg and 2 mg and show good improvemnt in a week or so. You may discuss these options with your psychiatrist. Hope I am able to answer your concerns. If you have any further query, I would be glad to help you. If not, you may close the discussion and if possible you may rate the answer for me, so that I get a good feedback. In future if you wish to contact me directly, you can use the below mentioned link: bit.ly/dr-srikanth-reddy Wish you good health, Kind regards Dr. Srikanth Reddy M.D.

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