Objectives] To systematically evaluate the total clinical effective rate of acupuncture treatment of depression, and provide clinical reference for the scheme design and selection of acupuncture treatment of depression. [Methods] By searching CNKI, Wanfang Data, CBM, VIP, Cochrane Library, Cochrane Central, Springer and other databases, randomized controlled experiment (RCT) on acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of depression from January 1, 2019 to August 31, 2022 was collected, to extract relevant data of total clinical effective rate and conduct methodological quality evaluation. Review'Manager 5.4.1 software was used for Meta analysis. [Results] 22 RCTs were included, 1 602 patients in total. Among them, there were 804 cases in treatment group and 798 cases in control group. Meta analysis results displayed that acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of depression may be better than the control group in improving the total clinical effective rate, and the difference was statistically significant [MD = 1.16, 95% Cl (1.11, 1.21)]. [Conduisions] Acupuncture and moxibustion can achieve a higher total clinical effective rate in the treatment of depression, which is worthy of clinical application. However, due to fewer studies included in this systematic evaluation, small sample size, and low quality, there was a high possibility of bias. Therefore, the above conclusions needed to be verified by high-quality, large-sample, and multi-center RCTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]