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Herbs Used to Treat Psychiatric Symptoms
As the patients constantly need the effective treatment, the scientists have a rather difficult task of getting the information about all the aspects of herbalism. Herbs have been found to have an important role in historic psychiatric medicine practice and they have been used conventionally as a first line treatment. Nevertheless, these herbs have to go through series of quality standard checks to assess their safety, potency to cause adverse events and tendency to cause addiction (Wong, Smith and Boon, 1998). Modern online libraries provide information about each herb and some prescriptions. However, the quality and the amount of the data varies depending on country, local climate and ecological standards. The found information helps in making definitive conclusions about how effective or safe each herb is as a part of the treatment.
Nowadays, rosemary and cinnamon aromatherapy is used in treating the depression. St. John’s Wort, Valerian and Kava are probably the most well-known herbs used for curing the psychiatric symptoms (Fantelli, 2015). Moreover, gingko has been used commercially worldwide for its beneficial role in improving loss or weakness of memory secondary to dementia. However, all these examples only support the idea that herbal therapy could be used only after establishing the diagnosis and testing for allergic markers. The efficacy of these herbs are questionable and some of them may have caused deleterious effects. As a result, instead of treatment of psychiatric illnesses you will get dysfunction of immune system. Evidence shows that herbal medicine can play a pivotal role in curing and managing psychiatric diseases with lesser side effects. However, today herbs are combined with psychiatric medications. At times, natural treatment could be a part of remission therapy, which supports you after clinical treatment, but without using allopathic medicine (Eisenberg et al., 1993). Studies have proven that herbal medicine is suitable for patients requiring psychiatric medicine but have issues with their digestive tract or have depressed liver function.
On one hand, herbal medicines have same therapeutic efficacy as compared to prescription drugs but with lower tendency to cause adverse reactions. On the contrary, their onset of action is slower as compared to their counterparts and may not necessarily be efficacious. Therefore, they are not so much popular and have not replaced prescription medicines.
References
Eisenberg, D., Kessler, R., Foster, C., Norlock, F., Calkins, D., & Delbanco, T. (1993). Unconventional Medicine in the United States -- Prevalence, Costs, and Patterns of Use. New England Journal Of Medicine, 328(4), 246-252. doi:10.1056/nejm199301283280406
Fantelli, G. (2015). Herbs for anxiety | Mental Healthy. Mental Healthy. Retrieved 6 July 2015, from http://www.mentalhealthy.co.uk/lifestyle/features/herbs-for-anxiety-depression-and-other-mental-illness.html
Wong, A., Smith, M., & Boon, H. (1998). Herbal Remedies in Psychiatric Practice. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 55(11), 1033. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.55.11.1033
