In different areas of Therapy, included Psychiatry, herbal medicine has had an increasing interest during the last years. Plants are traditional uses, but only a few have been approved therapeutically. However, we do not know any bibliometric analysis about herbs that are used in Psychiatry.

We have conducted a bibliometric study regarding scientific publications related to phytotherapy in the Psychiatry area during 1986-2006 period. Using the platform Embase.com (Elservier, Amsterdam), including EMBASE and MEDLINE database, we selected those documents whose included the descriptors plant, herb, phytotherap, and psychiatr (with all diagnostic criteria). Plants' indications had been selected according to PDR for Herbal Medicines. As bibliometric indicator of the production, Price's Law was applied.

A total of 21.409 original documents were obtained. Our data confirm a fulfilment of the Price' Law related to scientific production about medicinal plants in Psychiatry. We had observed it after carring out a lineal adjustment (y=135,08x-466,38 r=0.92) an another adjustment exponential curve (y=132,26e0.1497x; r=0.99). The plants more mentioned in the psychiatric literature have been St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum; n=937) and Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba; n=694). The countries with more percentage of documents were the Unites States (29,44%), Germany (9,41%) and Japan (8,75%), and the country with highest Index of Participation (number of documents per country / number of documents in our repertory) was India (IPa= 0,935) and China (IPa=0,721).

Productivity medicinal plants in the Psychiatry area increased during the period 1986-2006. Nevertheless, documents about therapeutic herbs in this field are rather little.