The effect of herbal medicine on postpartum anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Maternal and neonatal health can be negatively impacted by the mother’s postpartum anxiety. For fear of difficulties for the baby, mothers want to avoid taking any drugs during this time. The purpose of this systematic study was to evaluate how herbal remedies affect postpartum anxiety. We conducted a comprehensive search across various databases, including Persian databases (Magiran and Scientific Information Database), as well as international databases such as PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar until August 2024. Our search was focused on identifying randomized controlled trials that investigated the effectiveness of herbal medicines compared to placebo or routine care in reducing postpartum anxiety. The quality of the evidence was assessed using the GRADE approach. RevMan and Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software were utilized to conduct meta-analysis, metaregression analysis, sensitivity analysis, and the Egger test. This systematic review included five RCTS; a meta-analysis was carried out, and statistically significant differences were found between the intervention and control groups in the mean score of postpartum anxiety based on herbal medicine taken to reduce the mothers’ anxiety (standard mean difference = –1.19; confidence interval 95% = –2.08 to –0.30), and there was a considerable level of heterogeneity between the studies (I ² = 97%, P < 0.001). According to the metaregression analyses results, maternal age and total sample size were not identified as risk factors for the effect size of postpartum anxiety. The sensitivity analysis revealed that overall estimates of postpartum anxiety were not influenced by outlier studies. Based on the available evidence, we cannot recommend the use of herbal medicines for reducing postpartum anxiety, as there is currently insufficient evidence to support their effectiveness.