Stroke is a major cause of disability worldwide (Chau et al., 2019; World Health Organization, 2019). A report from the American Heart Association in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health concerning updated stroke statistics for 2022 indicated that stroke is the fifth most common cause of death (Tsao et al., 2022). However, previous studies (de Rooij et al., 2021; Pedreira da Fonseca et al., 2017) showed that treatment of stroke was focused on the disease itself and motor function, and mental health issues caused by stroke were ignored. Post-stroke depression (PSD) (Fishman et al., 2019; Hadidi et al., 2017) and anxiety (Mitchell et al., 2017) are common mental health conditions following stroke, and seriously affect patients' recovery of neurological function and ability to return to society. A 15-year follow-up study showed that the prevalence of depression among stroke survivors was 39.1 % and that of anxiety was 34.9 % (Crichton et al., 2016). In addition, the mortality rate associated with PSD was reported to be 1.28–1.75 times higher than that for simple stroke (Villa et al., 2018). Therefore, it is critical to provide safe and effective interventions to improve depression symptoms among patients post-stroke.

Telehealth is increasingly being used to assess and treat mental health problems, especially to alleviate depression, in various contexts, including HIV/AIDS (Saragih et al., 2021), postpartum women (Zhao et al., 2021), cancer (Agboola et al., 2015), and diabetes (Kaveh et al., 2021). Furthermore, offering telehealth technology to stroke survivors has become a popular trend. Telehealth technology can improve the use of hospital resources and reduce the inconvenience of needing to access hospital for stroke survivors, especially for those with limb dysfunction or that live in remote rural areas (Feigin et al., 2016). In addition, remote rehabilitation has been reported to improve a range of outcomes, including physical functioning and depression (Johansson and Wild, 2011; Laver et al., 2020; Uchida et al., 2020). There is a growing body of evidence that supports the use of telehealth interventions among patients post-stroke, including for self-management (Taft et al., 2021) and functional activity (Lin et al., 2014). However, there is a lack of systematic evaluation or meta-analysis data for depression symptoms of post-stroke patients. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically assess the effectiveness of telehealth interventions for addressing depression symptoms post-stroke.