ROLE OF MEDICINAL PLANTS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF BRAIN DISORDERS: A REVIEW UPDATE

Currently, brain disorders are a serious public health challenge worldwide. Synthetic drugs show symptomatic long treatments and cause serious side effects with poor patient compliance in the treatment of brain disorders. Therefore, the herbal/Ayurvedic treatments are being preferred over synthetic drugs for a variety of mental and neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia etc. Many plants have traditionally been used in the treatment of a variety of brain disorders. The herbal products offer considerable advantages in respect to easy accessibility, negligible or minimal side effects and cost effectiveness. In the present time much attention is being towards the herbal remedies for brain related disorders, which generates new hopes for the patients suffering from brain disorders. Over 60 million Indian population suffering from brain disorders and the country lags behind for treatment and spending much budget in the hospitals for mental cure, therefore it is high time to think and look forward for establishment of alternative system of medicine. As per recent reports about 1-2% Indian population suffers from schizophrenia whereas over 5% Indians suffers from common mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, epilepsy etc. A number of medicinal plants have been used for a variety of mental disorders such as epilepsy, depression, paralysis, Alzheimer’s diseases, insomnia, Parkinson’s disease, anxiety etc. In the present review an attempt has been made to review the current situation of mental disorder with its effective solution with the used of medicinal plants to combat various side effects of synthetic drugs.