In various guidelines for the management of depression, including the 3rd edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Guidelines for the Treatment of Depression (2010 edition of the Guidelines), which was officially released in October 2010, it is proposed that the overall goal of depression treatment has 3 main aspects: 1) to obtain clinical cure (remission); 2) to improve functional impairment; and 3) to improve quality of life. The concept and definition of clinical cure for depression originally originated from clinical trials of medications. In evaluating the efficacy of antidepressants, a decrease of 50% or more in the total score of the depressive symptom scale used in clinical trials is usually defined as effective (RESPONSE), while complete remission of depressive symptoms is defined as clinical cure. The internationally accepted criteria for clinical cure are as follows: 1. 17-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD) score ≤7; 2. Montgomery-Asberg Depression Scale (MADRS) score ≤10; 3. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) score ≤8; 4. Quick Depressive Symptom Inventory-16 (QIDS-SR16) score ≤5; 5. Patient Health Questionnaire Depression scale_9 items (PHQ-9) ≤5 points. The first 2 indicators were mainly used in drug clinical trials, and the exact definition of clinical cure was the achievement of the first 2 indicators after 4-6 weeks of antidepressant treatment (acute phase treatment). The use of two efficacy criteria, effective and clinical cure, in clinical trials allows comparison of whether there is a difference in efficacy between different drugs. In the last five years, the use of clinical cure has become more widespread because it can be used as a criterion to determine efficacy and predict prognosis. For example, the results of the sequential treatment study of depression suggest that patients who do not achieve clinical cure in the acute phase of treatment may be augmented by increasing the dose and duration of antidepressant therapy, combining antidepressants with different mechanisms of action, or combining augmentation medications, depending on the circumstances. The prognosis can be predicted as follows: patients with clinical cure in the acute phase of treatment have a low risk of relapse, patients who do not achieve clinical cure in the acute phase of treatment are prone to a chronic course, and failure to achieve clinical cure in the acute phase of treatment can affect the functional recovery of patients. In fact, there is an inconsistency in the perception of clinical cure between researchers and patients: about half of the depressed patients who met the HAMD criteria for clinical cure did not consider themselves to have achieved clinical cure, while those who considered themselves to have achieved clinical cure? again did not meet the HAMD-defined criteria for clinical cure. The fact that such a high proportion of HAMD-defined clinically cured patients do not consider themselves to have achieved clinical cure raises the question of whether the validity of the HAMD-defined clinical cure criteria is ideal. It has also been argued that clinical cure should be a broad concept rather than a mere remission of symptoms and include other clinical indicators such as functional status, quality of life, ability to manage stress, and the patient’s general well-being. This has led to the development of a number of assessment scales, such as the Clinical Evaluation of Healing and Affective Inventory (REMIT) developed by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School in the United States, which adds a dimension to the patient’s subjective assessment of the effectiveness of depression treatment.The REMIT consists of five items reflecting happiness, satisfaction, emotional control, ability to adjust mood, and hopelessness on a five-point scale from 0-4. The five REMIT items assess patients’ subjective feelings and are strongly associated with improvement in depression symptoms. These entries were validated in 1003 depressed patients from 2 clinical research centers, and it was concluded that the REMIT is a self-assessment tool that is a useful complement to currently used gold standards, such as the HAMD, and that clinicians can apply the REMIT in conjunction with the Depression Symptom Assessment Scale. Therefore, clinical cure criteria should be based on symptom scale assessment and should also include the patient’s positive mental status (e.g., optimism, self-confidence), restoration of pre-morbid self-perception, and restoration of normal functioning are the 3 assessment indicators.