Depression is a significant challenge in global public health affecting millions of people worldwide. We evaluated the research status of depression disease burden by searching articles published between 2013 and 2022 in the Web of Science Core Collection and CNKI, analyzing 6,828 English articles and 38 Chinese articles using CiteSpace and VOSviewer. Our study aimed to explore current trends, regions, institutions, authors, journals, keywords, and co-citations in this field. Our findings show that depression research in China is still evolving, while it has reached a high degree of maturity in other countries such as Europe, America, and Asia. The United States leads in this field, with 80% of the top ten authors and 40% of the top ten institutions. Its number of related institutions, professional researchers, and high-impact journals exceeds that of any other country, making it a global leader in depression research. Our analysis of keywords and co-citations reveals that popular topics in depression research include the development and optimization of screening tools, the association between psychological distress and depression, the correlation between depression and chronic diseases, and the treatment and management of treatment-resistant depression. Our study provides useful insights into current trends and hotspots in depression research, which may inform future research directions aiming to alleviate depressive disease burden.