Abstract: Objective: To examine nurses' knowledge and attitude about depressive disorder in Beijing. Methods: We distributed the questionnaires to 447 nurses from four hospitals in Beijing. Results: On depression-related knowledge, 447 nurses’ score was 11.99 ± 4.85, average score at awareness of the disease was 43.02%. The scores of nurses’ depressionrelated knowledge were statistically significantly different to the rank of hospital, type of department, length of work,professional grade (P<0.01). The score from non-psychiatric nurses was significantly lower than it from psychiatric nurses and non-psychiatric doctors (P<0.01). The attitude to depression between non-psychiatric nurses and psychiatric nurses were compared resulting as some of items were statistically significant (P<0.05). Conclusion: Nurses in general are lack of knowledge of depression, and their awareness of the disease appears at low level. There is a necessity to improve nonpsychiatric nurses’ knowledge and attitudes about depression. We suggest strengthening further training to improve nurses’ knowledge and skills of identifying depression to ensure good quality of care.