In China, depression is now one of the top three public health problems. Statistics show that 5 per cent of Chinese people suffer from the disease and 13 out of 1,000 Chinese have mental health issues [4] . Until 2003, China has over 26 million depression patients, for which discrimination and neglect are the two major obstacles to curing them, thus incurring an annual loss of over 64 billion yuan, according to a reserved estimation made at the Seminar on Attention to the Socio-Economic Burden of Depression held [5] . . We used the search terms "depression," "xiaoyaowan," "xiaoyaosan," and "xiaoyaotang." Various combinations of the terms were used, depending on the database searched. The bibliographies of included studies were searched for additional references.