A Review on Antidepressant Activity of Various Plants (Review Article)

Author(s): Sunanda Sabbithi*, Malavika Reddy, B. Asmitha, D. Vaishnavi, and B. Ajay

Abstract: Depressive disorder, or depression, is a common mental health condition and is characterized by a low mood or loss of pleasure or interest in activities for long periods of time. It is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder, that affects the life style and has been classified and treated in a variety of ways. Now a days, number of synthetic antidepressant drugs are available, these drugs have limited effect and associated with more side effects as well as chronic toxicity. To obtain better therapeutic benefits and minor adverse reactions, search for alternative antidepressant from natural source i.e., herbal remedies, which were used traditionally, and are safe on human health, is gaining global attention. Recently, it has been reported that the use of polyherbal formulation exhibit synergistic activity to achievement of maximum beneficial potency as compared to single herb. Therefore, the objective of this review is to enlist medicinal herbs &plants which have antidepressant action using the various rodent models of depression. The multiple causing factors of depression are decreased levels of neurotransmitter in brain including noradrenalin, dopamine and serotonin. Therefore, these medicinal herbs restore the reduced levels of eurotransmitter in the brain either by inhibiting reuptake of eurotransmitters or by inhibiting monoamine oxidase and treat mild to moderate depression. Antidepressants decrease the duration of immobility in the forced swim test in the rat and the mouse and in the tail suspension test in the mouse.

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