Role of medicinal plants with antidepressant action and its mechanism: A Review

Depression is complex neuropsychiatric disorder, affects the life style and daily life with social relations of a person and that has been classified and treated in a variety of ways. Now a day, number of synthetic antidepressant drugs is available, these drugs have limited effect or restrictions in their clinical applications and associated with more side effect as well as the chronic toxicity that affect almost every organ system. These available drugs have potential for adverse effects on cognition and behavior. 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. Traditionally, these herbal medicines were used medicinally in India, China, Japan, Egypt and Greece. Therefore, the objective of this review is to enlist medicinal herbs and plant-based formulations which have antidepressant action using the various rodent models of depression. The multiple causing factor of depression decreased levels of neurotransmitter in brain including noradrenalin, dopamine and serotonin. Therefore, these medicinal herbs restoring the reduced levels of neurotransmitter in the brain either by inhibiting reuptake of these neurotransmitters or by inhibiting monoamine oxidase and might be treat mild to moderate depression.