Effects of Curcumin on Depression and Anxiety: A Narrative Review of the Recent Clinical Data

Depressive and anxiety disorders affect a significant proportion of the global population and constitute one of the highest disease burdens worldwide. Conventional pharmacological treatments are traditionally the first line of therapy for individuals affected by these conditions although these are only successful approximately half of the time and are often associated with undesirable side effects. This review describes the use of the natural substance curcumin as a potential alternative treatment of these mental disorders. With this in mind, we analyzed the effects of curcumin in eight clinical studies of depression and five studies of anxiety and assessed these using psychiatric symptom scores and molecular biomarker readouts.