Herbal medicines in the treatment of psychiatric disorders: A systematic review

Abstract

This paper reports a critical review of 27 herbal medicines and formulas in treating a broad range of psychiatric disorders (in addition to anxiety and depression), including obsessive-compulsive, seasonal affective, bipolar depressive, psychotic, phobic and somatoform disorders. Ovid Medline, Pubmed and the Cochrane Library were searched for pharmacological and clinical evidence of herbal medicines with psychotropic activity. A forward search of later citations was also conducted. Whilst substantial high-quality evidence exists for the use of kava and St John's wort in the treatment of anxiety and depression respectively, currently there is insufficient robust clinical evidence for the use ..