The interventions included all the prescriptions based on "xiaoyaosan" including pills, powder, decoction dosage form alone, with Maprotiline placebo or with antidepressants. The controls included antidepressants alone or the combination of danzhiXiaoyaosan (DXS) placebo and antidepressants. Eight trials investigated the prescriptions based on "xiaoyaosan" using alone [9, 17-19, 23, 30] or plus placebo [12, 15] versus antidepressants, one three-arm trial and the rest sixteen trials [7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 20-22, 24-29, 31, 32] compared the prescriptions based on "xiaoyaosan" plus antidepressants versus antidepressants.