PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of aromatherapy on anxiety, depression, and stress. METHODS: Medical and nursing literature databases were searched to identify studies comparing aromatherapy with a control group. RESULTS: Thirty-one studies published till September 2008 were included in the analysis. Twenty-two studies showed that aromatherapy generally had positive effects on the anxiety level (ES: 0.61). Thirteen studies showed that aromatherapy has significantly decreased the depression level (ES: 0.91). Seven studies showed that aromatherapy had positive effect on the stress level (ES: 0.78). Further analysis found that aromatherapy was more effective for normal population than for patients group with anxiety and stress. On the contrary, aromatherapy was more effective for patients group than for general population with depression. CONCLUSION: Aromatherapy had positive effect on anxiety, depression and stress level. But there was no sufficient evidence to show the two different aromatherapy methods and two different period of aromatherapy had different effects due to small sample size and heterogeneity of sample. And it was needed to perform follow-up and further comparative studies.
Anxiety ; Aromatherapy* ; Depression ; Humans ; Nursing* ; Population Characteristics ; Sample Size