Literature Review: Herbal Medicine Treatment after Large-Scale Disasters

Abstract

Large-scale natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and typhoons, occur worldwide. After the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, our medical support operation's experiences suggested that traditional medicine might be useful for treating the various symptoms of the survivors. However, little information is available regarding herbal medicine treatment in such situations. Considering that further disasters will occur, we performed a literature review and summarized the traditional medicine approaches for treatment after large-scale disasters. We searched PubMed and Cochrane Library for articles written in English, and Ichushi for those written in Japanese. Articles published before 31 March 2016 were included. Keywords "disaster" and "herbal medicine" were used in our search. Among studies involving herbal medicine after a disaster, we found two randomized controlled trials investigating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), three retrospective investigations of trauma or common diseases, and seven case series or case reports of dizziness, pain, and psychosomatic symptoms. In conclusion, herbal medicine has been used to treat trauma, PTSD, and other symptoms after disasters. However, few articles have been published, likely due to the difficulty in designing high quality studies in such situations. Further study will be needed to clarify the usefulness of herbal medicine after disasters.

Health-Related Rehabilitation after the 2008 Great Wenchuan Earthquake in China: A Ten Year Retrospective Systematic Review

“…The interventions were also effective in treating and reducing the survivors' PTSD symptoms like anxiety and depression, and also in enhancing their psychological resilience [35,36,38,39]. These findings are consistent with previous results from a broad systematic literature review and meta-analysis studies that similarly explored the different rehabilitation interventions, services and outcomes in post-earthquake settings, and those following other disasters within and outside China [2,[13][14][15]43,44,[48][49][50][51][52]. Encouragingly, some of the HRR programs after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, such as physical and physiological rehabilitation, commenced within the first 5 months after the earthquake, which is commendable and helped to ameliorate long-term impacts such as injuries and PTSD from turning into acute problems for survivors that would prevent them from returning to normal life.…”

“…Earthquakes, like any other disasters, are traumatic events and they result in a range of physical, mental and psychological health consequences [2,8,[12][13][14][15]43,[50][51][52]56]. Indeed, this is attested to in the results of six studies in our systematic review [35][36][37][38][39]41]-which showed a high prevalence of PTSD among the different groups of survivors of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.…”

“…They were premised on traditional or indigenous treatments and digital technologies, such as traditional Chinese medicine -XTJYF [35] and web-based interventions [41]. In this case, embracing the traditional rehabilitation treatments was not only helpful in terms of cheaper fees, easy accessibility and enabling the provision of quick services, especially in the resource-constrained settings, but also helped treatment to be embraced in settings like Sichuan province, where traditional medicine is still cherished for good health and treating various symptoms of patients [52][53][54]. Moreover, similar to XTJYF traditional Chinese medicine, for example, 'Kampo', a Japanese medicine is reported from ancient times to have been used to treat various infections and traumas, injuries, fractures and pain [52].…”

“…In this case, embracing the traditional rehabilitation treatments was not only helpful in terms of cheaper fees, easy accessibility and enabling the provision of quick services, especially in the resource-constrained settings, but also helped treatment to be embraced in settings like Sichuan province, where traditional medicine is still cherished for good health and treating various symptoms of patients [52][53][54]. Moreover, similar to XTJYF traditional Chinese medicine, for example, 'Kampo', a Japanese medicine is reported from ancient times to have been used to treat various infections and traumas, injuries, fractures and pain [52]. On the other hand, harnessing the evolving digital technologies, for example, different web-based applications, can be a pathway for delivering a full spectrum of health services, including self-rehabilitation [28,55] without the need for face-to-face encounters between a patient and a rehabilitation service provider in the post-earthquake scenario.…”

“…Indeed, this is attested to in the results of six studies in our systematic review [35][36][37][38][39]41]-which showed a high prevalence of PTSD among the different groups of survivors of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. PTSD aroused several symptoms such as anxiety, depression, anger, stress, psychoticism, somatization, sleep disorders, interpersonal sensitivity and violence, as well as thoughts, feelings, or stimuli associated with the traumatic events, among victims [2,[12][13][14][15][35][36][37][38][39]41,44,51,52,56,57]. Again, this argument concurs with the findings of an earlier systematic review and meta-analysis studies, which affirmed how a real burden of PTSD is prevalent in many earthquake survivors [12][13][14][15]43,44,49,56,58].…”