There are plant species used in the Mexican traditional medicine for the empirical treatment of anxiety and depression.
This work assessed the prevalence of self-medication with medicinal plants and the prevalence of the concomitant use of prescribed psychiatric drugs and medicinal plants for treating symptoms associated with anxiety and depression during the Covid-19 lockdown in Mexico.
The suspected adverse reactions associated with drug-herb interactions were assessed. The factors associated with self-medication, the concomitant use of herb-drug combinations, and the presence of adverse reactions due their combined use is also reported. The study was descriptive and cross-sectional using an online questionnaire conducted among population with symptoms associated with anxiety and depression (n = 2100) from seven states of central-western Mexico.
The prevalence of the use of herbs (61.9%) and the concomitant use of drug-herb combinations (25.3%) were associated with being diagnosed with mental illness [OR:2.195 (1.655–2.912)] and the use of psychiatric medications [OR:307.994 (178.609–531.107)], respectively. The presence of adverse reactions (n = 104) by the concomitant use of drug-herb combinations was associated with being unemployed [p = 0.004, OR: 3.017 (1.404–6.486)].