A naturalistic, observational study of Western herbal medicine practice in self-reported anxiety and depression

Status

Recruiting

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ANZCTR

Registry ID

ACTRN12616000010493

Enrollment

200

Registered

2016-01-12

Start date

2016-03-01

Completion date

2017-07-01

Last updated

2020-01-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

None listed

Brief summary

The project is a naturalistic observational study of individualised Western herbal medicine in a naturopathic practice setting. This project will explore the effectiveness of individualised herbal medicine prescriptions in self-reported anxiety and depressions, using a whole practice framework. This approach will not only help to evaluate total herbal medicine practice as it is practised – rather than evaluate individual herbal medicines in specific conditions in a manner which does not reflect practice – but will also help to develop research capacity on the herbal practitioner community, who will be involved in the study.

Interventions

An observational study of the outcome of individualised herbal medicine (as prescribed by a naturopath qualified in herbal medicine) over 16 weeks on depression and anxiety (i.e. this study will be observing and documenting the effects of individualised herbalism rather than individual herbal therapies - herbal medicines will be prescribed according to patient presentation in ingestible tablet, tincture or tea form drawn from common practitioner-only range of products in naturopathic dispenseries). Please note this is not an interventional study. We are documenting treatment as it occurs in natural practice, at the discretion of the practitioner (note: these will be included as variables). This is a hypothesis generating study, with some effectiveness measures, but these will be used to identify priorities for further investigation in an interventional, comparative study. Participants will be receiving an individualised herbal medicine intervention irrespective of their enrolment in this study (under the care of the same practitioner). Treatment is also identical to the treatment that the participant would have received had they not been enrolled in the study, i.e. there is no change to care as a result of enrolment. This includes the duration of treatment which would have been prescribed.

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

All

Age

18 Years to 70 Years

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Patient inclusion criteria consists of any adults (aged 18-70) presenting with either self-reported depressed mood and/or anxiety (ongoing for more than two weeks) as their primary complaint and reason for seeking treatment (although they may have other co-morbid health issues as well). Participants will already be already due to receive individualised herbal medicine as their treatment regardless of their participation in this study.

Exclusion criteria

1) Outside the age range 2) Not competent in English reading, writing, and speaking

Outcome results