Herbal Remedies to Treat Anxiety Disorders

Common anxiety disorders Generalized anxiety disorders (GAD)Generalized anxiety disorder is a syndrome of ongoing anxiety and worry about many events or feelings that the patient generally recognizes as extreme and inappropriate (DSM-IV-TR).Individuals manifest both physical and psychological symptoms leading to significant distress or impairment. www.intechopen.comDifferent Views of Anxiety Disorders 274 Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)People suffering from OCD tend to have bothersome and intrusive thoughts that generate anxiety (obsession) and perform repetitive actions (compulsion).Obsessions include unwanted thoughts, impulses, or images that cause great anxiety.Compulsions include repetitive behaviors or mental acts that those affected feel driven to perform. Panic disorderPeople suffering from panic disorders often have panic attacks, defined as discrete periods of sudden symptom onset usually peaking in 10 minutes and can occur with most anxiety disorders. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)Individuals with PTSD avoid stimuli associated with the trauma and feel an extreme amount of fear and anxiety after presenting stimuli.Stress is a condition which affects physiological and psychological homeostasis.Evidence indicates that chronic repeated stress precipitates neuropsychiatric disorders like anxiety and depression (Holsboer, 1988;McEwen and Stellar, 1993;McEwen, 2000;Vyas et al., 2002; Veena et al., 2009b; 2011).Previous work in an animal model of stress revealed that chronic stress impairs learning in the T-maze (Sunanda et al., 2000a) and radial arm maze (Srikumar et al., 2006; 2007; Veena et al., 2009a) tasks in addition to inducing anxiety-like behavior (Adamec et al., 1999;Vyas et al., 2002;Govindarajan et al., 2006).Stress-induced behavioral impairments are associated with structural (Ramkumar et al., 2008;Shankaranarayana Rao et al., 2001;Shankaranarayana Rao & Raju, 2004;2005; 2007), biochemical (Sunanda et al., 2000b), molecular (Bennur et al., 2007;Pawlak et al., 2005; Veena et al., 2011) and electrophysiological (Hegde et al., 2008) alterations in the hippocampus and amygdala regions.Recent studies have clearly demonstrated the abnormal synaptic plasticity is responsible for cognitive deficits including enhanced anxiety in fragile X mental retardation and autism (Dolen et al., 2007;Hayashi et al., 2007).Induction of progressive plasticity is known to be responsible for amelioration of stress-induced cognitive deficits and depression-like behavior by enriched environment and brain stimulation rewarding experience (Asha Devi et al., 2011;Ramkumar et al., 2008; Shankaranarayana Rao, 2009; 2010; Veena et al., 2009a).Anxiety and other psychiatric conditions are one of the most frequent conditions seen by clinicians and often require long-term treatment with medications.Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and benzodiazepines are important class of drugs used to treat generalized anxiety disorders (Davidson, 2001;Davidson, 2009) and depression (Bhagya et al., 2008;Bhagya et al., 2011).With the increasing cost of anti-anxiety medications and their increased side effects like suicidal ideation, decreased alertness, sexual dysfunction and dependency (Hu et al., 2004;Gunnell et al., 2005;O'brien, 2005;Lader et al., 2009), drugs of natural origin are promising alternatives to treat neuropsychiatric disorders (Kienzle-Horn, 2002;Carlini, 2003). Common herbal remedies for anxietyAyurveda, the Indian traditional system of medicine uses herbs and their preparations to treat various neuropsychiatric disorders.Numerous herbs have been used for centuries in folk and other traditional medicine to calm the mind and positively enhance mood.Herbal medicine which plays an important role in developing countries, are once again becoming How to referenceIn order to correctly reference this scholarly work, feel free to copy and paste the following: Bhagya Venkanna Rao, Bettadapura N.