Herbal medicine

What are herbal medicines? 

Herbal medicines have been suggested as a potential alternative treatment to antipsychotics. Herbal therapies can include traditional Chinese medicines and Indian ayurvedic therapy, as well as more common medicines such as Gingko Biloba.

What is the evidence for alternative herbal medicines?

Moderate to low quality evidence suggests the antipsychotic chlorpromazine may be more effective than Dang gui cheng qi tang for global symptoms.

Moderate to low quality evidence suggests wendon decoction may improve global symptoms more than no treatment, but when compared to antipsychotics, there were no differences in symptoms. However, there were fewer extrapyramidal and insomnia side effects with wendon decoction.

Low quality evidence is unable to determine any benefit of ayurvedic herbal therapies over placebo or the antipsychotic chlorpromazine.

October 2020

Last updated at: 2:54 am, 1st October 2020
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Title Colour Legend:
Green - Topic summary is available.
Orange - Topic summary is being compiled.
Red - Topic summary has no current systematic review available.