According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 840 million women have experienced domestic or sexual violence during their lifetime, a figure that’s barely budged since 2000. At the end of the trial, the participants who were taking the antidepressant showed a significant reduction in domestic violence re-offenses. A year into the study, for example, reported incidents of domestic violence were 5.7 percent lower in the group taking sertraline than in the control group. By the end of the study, the rate of repeated domestic violence offending, which the researchers define as “more than one offense in 24 months,” was 44 percent lower in the medicated group. Given that domestic violence is largely impulsive, serotonin regulation has been theorized to be a key factor in whether someone attacks their partner in heated moments, or stops to let cooler heads prevail.