Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was the main form of treatment in China for psychiatric illnesses until the development of antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s. Antipsychotic drugs have become the primary intervention for schizophrenia, although herbal medicines can still form part of the treatment. Chinese authors reviewed Chinese herbal medicine, used alone or as part of a TCM approach, for people with schizophrenia and related psychoses. They included all relevant RCTs involving people with schizophrenia-like illnesses allocated to Chinese herbal medicine, including any Chinese herbs (single or mixture), compared with placebo/no treatment or antipsychotic drugs. They independently extracted data and calculated fixed effects relative risk, the 95% CI for homogeneous dichotomous data and, where appropriate, the number needed to treat on an ITT basis. For continuous data, they calculated weighted mean differences. Only one small trial of the seven included studies that truly evaluated TCM for schizophrenia. The other trials evaluated Chinese herbs for schizophrenia. They found one study comparing Chinese herbal medicine with antipsychotic drugs. Data for the global state outcome ‘no change/worse’ favoured people allocated to antipsychotic medication. Six trials compared Chinese herbal medicine in combination with antipsychotic with anti-psychotic drugs alone. One trial found global state ‘not improved/worse’ favoured the herbal medicine/antipsychotic combination. Two studies also found short-term data from the CGI scale favoured the herbal medicine plus antipsychotic group compared with those given only antipsychotics. Significantly fewer people in the experimental group left the study early compared with those given antipsychotics alone. Reports of constipation were significantly lower in the treatment group compared to those receiving antipsychotics.