The efficacy of homoeopathic medicine anacardium Orientale as an adjuvant medicine in the treatment of bipolar affective disorder: A randomized controlled trail

Abstract

Background: Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks which cause the significant psychological distress, affects one’s work, family, social life and may even result in suicide. During the homoeopathic drug proving of Anacardium Orientale, as per the provers Materia Medica the recorded mental symptoms were similar to BPAD symptoms. Hence, this study was done to assess the efficacy of Anacardium Orientale in the treatment of Bipolar Affective disorder as an Adjuvant Medicine.Methodology: Total 30 cases were selected and randomized as Anacardium group and placebo group. For all the cases GB scale score was measured before and after the treatment and BPAD Symptom Severity (SS) Scale was used to check the effectiveness of Anacardium Orientale. A 6-month follow-up was done for every case. Two from each group discontinued the treatment, total 26 patients were taken for statistical analysis.Results: In Anacardium group, 10 patients had shown significant improvement (76.92%) whereas the condition of three patients had not improved (23.07%). According to the treatment outcome Anacardium Oreintale was found more effective in the patient who has current episode mild or moderate depression (F 31.3) and current episode hypomanic (F 31.0) and in patients with current episode mania without psycotic symptoms (F 31.1).Conclusions: After the statistical analysis of the score obtained from Goldberg Scale and BPAD symptom severity scale, Anacardium Orientale the homoeopathic medicine was found effective in the management of bipolar affective disease as an adjuvant medicine than the placebo.