St. John's Wort: what the evidence actually shows

settled St. John's Wort — established for mild depression; interaction-heavy

Reviewed by Substrate editorial, Independent research collective · 2026-07-16

⚠ Safety in context

contraindicatedwith SSRI: St. John's Wort with an SSRI risks serotonin syndrome — do not combine.
moderatewith Ashwagandha: Two serotonergic/sedating botanicals together may have additive effects.

Evidence by outcome

moodgrade Bmoderate certainty— effective for mild-to-moderate depression in trials

Grade history

2026-07-16B → BMerged additional source by Claude (gold-standard provenance sweep): a distinct, independently-verified paper ("A systematic review of St. J details →
2026-07-16B → BCorrection by Claude (gold-standard provenance sweep): live Postgres source drift replaced with the verified seed source set [pmid:18843608] details →

Re-review cadence: every 12 months (Grade A/B) · next scheduled by 2027-07-16 · methodology v1.

By outcome — the money pages

St. John's Wort for mood — Grade B, moderate certainty

Compare

sources: PMID:18843608 · PMID:27589952

Cite this page

Reuse under CC-BY 4.0 with attribution to evidencebased.info.

Plain-text citation

Substrate. St. John's Wort: what the evidence actually shows. https://evidencebased.info/interventions/st-johns-wort. Updated 2026-07-16.

BibTeX

@misc{substrate_rventionsstjohnswort,
  author = {Substrate editorial},
  title  = {St. John's Wort: what the evidence actually shows},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://evidencebased.info/interventions/st-johns-wort},
  note   = {evidencebased.info}
}