Objective To assess the changes in depression symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) receiving combined treatment of deep brain stimulation (DBS) and antiparkinsonian drug therapy (DT) compared with under DT alone. Methods Related literature was retrieved from electronic databases, including PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Data, and VIP databases. Stata 14.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Network meta-analysis was performed using frequentist model to compare different interventions with each other. Results Five cohort studies and seven randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were included. The total number of participants was 1241. Assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) score as the primary outcome, patients who received DT alone showed worse outcome in depression as compared to those who received subthalamic nucleus (STN)-DBS plus DT [standardized mean difference (SMD)=0.30, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.01, 0.59), P<0.05], and there was no significant difference between the patients receiving globus pallidus interna (GPi)-DBS plus DT and those receiving STN-DBS plus DT [SMD=–0.12, 95%CI (–0.41, 0.16), P>0.05] or those receiving DT alone [SMD=–0.42, 95%CI (–0.84, 0.00), P>0.05]. Assessed by BDI-Ⅱ as the primary outcome, patients who received DT alone showed worse outcome in depression than those who received STN-DBS plus DT [SMD=0.29, 95%CI (0.05, 0.54), P<0.05]; compared with STN-DBS plus DT and DT alone, GPi-DBS plus DT was associated with better improvement in depression [SMD=–0.26, 95%CI (–0.46, –0.06), P<0.05; SMD=–0.55, 95%CI (–0.88, –0.23), P<0.05]. The ranking results of surface under the cumulative ranking curves showed that DBS plus DT had a better superiority in depression symptoms, and GPi-DBS was better than STN-DBS. Conclusion Compared with DT, STN-DBS plus DT is more likely to improve the depressive symptoms of PD patients, and GPi-DBS may be better than STN-DBS.