Alternative, Complementary, or Not: Is Mainstream Medicine Ready for Herbal Medicine?

Proponents of herbal therapies frequently insist that traditional physicians must be made ready to accept so-called “alternative” or “complementary” treatments. In this month's issue of CNS Spectrums, two wonderful guest editors, Drs. Jonathan Davidson and Kathryn M. Connor, both of Duke University, help us turn that issue around. The real question for psychiatrists, neurologists, and neuroscientists is whether herbal treatments are ready for us.Due in large part to recent Congressional mandates, dietary supplements, even when proposed to work for medical conditions like depression and generalized anxiety disorder, do not require approval in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration as pharmaceutical agents.