After primary search of 5 databases, 263 trials were screen out from electronic and manual searches (Figure 1 ), and the majority were excluded due to obvious ineligibility which including irrelevant titles and abstract (some papers being found from more than one database). 141 trials with full text papers were retrieved. 122 RCTs were excluded because of reporting the depression complicated with other disease such as stroke and postpartum, 60 trials were excluded because of duplicated publication, 22 trials were excluded due to the animal studies, and the rest 41 trials were noncontrolled [7, 17, 22, 25, 31, 32] used the China classification and diagnostic criteria for mental disorder (second edition CCMD-2-R) alone, six [8, 9, 11, 18, 20, 24, [26] [27] [28] 30] trials used the third edition (CCMD-3) alone, three trials combined international classification on the diagnosis of depression (ICD-10) with CCMD-2-R [19] or CCMD-3 [12, 15] , one trials [21] combined the depression standard in "internal medicine of Chinese medicine" and CCMD-3 together, one trial [16] used CCMD-3 and affective disorder in the western medicine and Chinese medicine classification and diagnostic criteria on depression breaks out, two trials [10, 29] used CCMD-3 and the diagnostic criteria of Chinese medicine on depression and stagnation of liver qi, one trial [23] used CCMD-3 and depression of liverqi stagnation and spleen deficiency, the last trial [13] used the depression standard in TCM on liver-qi stagnation and spleen deficiency.