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Many studies are done, testing different herbal remedies, pharmaceutical remedies, therapies, etc. for their potential to help resolve mental health disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder.
Usually we are looking, and hoping, to find the therapeutic being tested can help relieve or resolve mental health disorders like this.
Sometimes the results are a bit more interesting.
Enter this study published in the March 2020 edition of The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.
Researchers performed a phase III, multi-site, two-arm, 16-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to study the effects an aqueous extract of dried kava root had on non-medicated participants who had been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.
The researchers noted the previous short-term studies showed some effectiveness, but they wanted to see how the kava root performed in a longer-term study.
The hope held by those looking for effective therapeutics for anxiety is clearly that kava root would have performed well.
In a sense, it did.
But the results seem to open up more possible avenues of research than kava root.
Let’s see what happened.
Of those who participated in the kava group, 17.4% were classified as remitted at the conclusion of the study.
While not reflecting a slam dunk, miracle cure, that’s not too bad.
Of those who participated in the placebo group, however, 23.8% were classified as remitted at the conclusion of the study.
That’s even better.
So what do we take from this?
Is kava effective or ineffective?
It’s hard to tell from this study.
What can the 17.4% remitted rate be attributed to? Could it be attributed to the kava administration?
Possibly.
But the fact that an even larger number of participants on the placebo were classified as remitted opens up more avenues of possibilities.
Obviously, the placebo itself did not cause remitting.
Either the belief of the participants or some other unknown factors caused this.
Could those factors have had an impact in the kava group as well?
Sure, that’s possible. It’s also possible it was the kava itself that had an impact. And perhaps different types of extracts and different concentrations could have had different impacts. More research is needed to know for certain.
But, the idea that the positive belief and/or hope of those who participated in the placebo group could have positively impacted the anxiety levels of such a number of participants may provide hope for encouraging future research.
Obviously, these study results do not confirm that positivity or hope caused remitting nor are we suggesting they do.
However, there is the potential that these results may support the notion that mindset work could help some people who struggle with generalized anxiety disorder.
More research needs to be done to either confirm or reject these notions.
Obvious questions that need to be answered are who precisely might benefit, if there are indeed benefits to be derived from this kind of work, and what those specific therapeutic modalities might be, among a litany of other questions.
So, does this mean that positive belief, hope, and/or mindset work can cure generalized anxiety disorder, at least in some?
We obviously do not know for sure.
Research to give us greater insight into these things is extremely valuable.
In the meantime, those who do struggle with this disorder may want to consult their licensed health care practitioners to see if either kava or any of a number of different mindset therapies might be appropriate for them.
Always talk to your licensed health care practitioners before starting or changing any therapy, prescription, or medical program/modality. The information presented here is for informational purposes only.
As always, here’s to your health!
Reference: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31813230/
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