Strengths and limitations
depression, psychiatric, acute stroke
ACUTE STROKE
To our knowledge, this is the first large‐scale trial which focused on testing the effectiveness of G‐ACT in treating depression for acute stroke patients. The results showed that G‐ACT could reduce depression, and the effect was still significant over time (partial This study has several limitations. The study was conducted in one center with mainly hospitalized patients with acute stroke whose length of hospitalization was mostly less than 1 month. Although the study increased the occurrences of G‐ACT per week, there were still some patients who were unable to complete all seven sessions at the hospital. Participation in the study was voluntary and excluded patients using psychiatric drugs including antidepressants or sedatives so that the sample may not have been representative of the overall population, and a single site limits the generalizability of the findings. Most of the included patients were assessed as having mild depression, and it might be expected that their mental health would improve along with the recovery of neurological function compared with those with severe or moderate depression (Niu et al., 