Effective treatment of stress and anxiety symptoms in patients with chronic diseases

Abstract

Acute or chronic stress, as well as high anxiety condition constitute risk factors leading to the development and progression of many common chronic diseases, including cardiovascular, endocrinological, pulmonary, oncological diseases, etc. A particular feature of these conditions co-occurring with chronic diseases is their significant impact on the motivational aspect of medication compliance, including non-pharmaceutical treatments and a healthy lifestyle, which can increase manyfold the risk for complicated course of chronic somatic disease. On the one hand, the urgent need to identify and manage anxiety and stress disorders in the outpatient practice is caused by high incidence rates of these disorders in patients with chronic pathologies, deteriorated quality of life and increased adverse outcomes, and on the other hand, by inadequate awareness of the options available for safe and efficient correction of these disorders. Therapeutic approaches to the management of high anxiety conditions, in particular those under chronic stress, include both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical treatments, but their efficiency, availability and safety are often not interchangeable. This review article presents the most common variants of anxiety disorders combined with chronic somatic diseases in outpatient practice. A safe and effective option to combat symptoms of stress and high anxiety using modern herbal medicines with anti-anxiety, sedative and antispasmodic effects that can be regarded as alternatives to conventional anxiolytics is considered.