The invention discloses a traditional Chinese medicine extract with an anti-depression effect and application thereof. 300 to 600 parts of ginseng root, 200 to 400 parts of thinleaf milkwort root, 200 to 400 parts of grassleaf sweelflag rhizome and 300 to 600 parts of Indian bread as active pharmaceutical ingredients are added with water and extracted, and extract is taken out and concentrated, so that concentrate is obtained; the concentrate is purified by a macroporous resin column, water is first used for removing impurities, ethanol of optimal volume is then adopted for elution, so that eluent is obtained, and the traditional Chinese medicine extract is obtained by concentration. Demonstrated by a mouse tail suspension and swimming depression model and PC12 cell and C6 cell models, the traditional Chinese medicine extract provided by the invention has an effect of obviously improving depressive emotion, inhibiting neurotransmitter degradation and promoting neurotrophic factor expression, the therapeutic effect is reliable, safety is high, adverse reaction is low, and the traditional Chinese medicine extract can be used for preparing anti-depression drugs.