The present study has been designed for pharmacological validation of chronic social stress paradigm as a model of depressive symptoms in rats. For this, rats were subjected to 5 weeks of daily social defeat and in parallel treated for clinically relevant period of 4 weeks with antidepressant drugs citalopram and reboxetine and neuroleptic drug haloperidol. Anxiolytic diazepam was administered acutely at the end of the stress period. The effects of social stress and the treatments were investigated in behavioural paradigms such as sucrose preference, forced swim test, open field test and elevated plus maze. Four weeks of oral treatment with applied antidepressants ameliorated the adverse effects of social stress and normalized behaviours related to motivation and reward sensitivity. The treatment with haloperidol worsened the adverse effects of chronic social stress having effects similar to stress on reward and motivation related behaviours. Treatment with diazepam caused reduction of anxiety related behaviours as measured in elevated plus maze in control animals having no effects on socially stressed individuals. Neither sucrose preference nor performance in forced swim test was affected by diazepam treatment. Effectiveness and selectivity of antidepressant treatment in ameliorating socially induced behavioural disturbances proofs validity of chronic social stress as a model of depressive symptoms in rats.