To explore the distribution of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) constitutions in depression through meta-analysis，to provide a high level of evidence-based medical evidence for the prevention and treatment of depression by TCM.Methods:China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)，Chinese Biomedical Database(CBM)，China Science Periodical Database(CSPD)，Chinese Citation Database(CCD)，MEDLINE，Embase，and The Cochrane Library were searched to screen qualified case-control literature on the correlation between depression and TCM constitutions.The literature data were extracted to evaluate the quality of the studies.The included case-control studies involving the TCM constitution types in depression was analyzed with Revman 5.3 for heterogeneity test，and the effect size was expressed by 95% confidence interval.Results:A total of 20 case-control studies were included，with 4 612 depressed patients and 7 614 non-depressed patients.In terms of the distribution frequency of TCM constitutions，qi depression(22.87%)>qi deficiency(22.06%)>yang deficiency(17.42%)>yin deficiency(13.25%).There were no differences in the distribution of the other five TCM constitutions among depressed patients.Of the 20 included studies，6 on poststroke depression and 2 on depression after diabetes had high quality in methodology，while 8 on single depression and 4 on depression after other diseases had low quality.Overall，there were certain risks of bias.Conclusion:The occurrence and development of depression are most closely related to qi depression and qi deficiency constitutions，followed by yang deficiency and yin deficiency constitutions.Due to the limited quantity and quality of the original literature，the above conclusions may be biased to some extent，which needs further in-depth study.