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Background: Low levels of affective mentalization have been linked to depression severity. Objective: Our objective was to examine how affective mentalization relates to and predicts depression severity and whether an affective-mentalization-intervention reduces state-depression severity. Methods: In Study 1, we investigated the cross-sectional association between affective mentalization measured with the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire and depression severity gauged with the Patient-Health-Questionnaire-9 in a clinical sample of psychosomatic outpatients (N = 729). In Study 2, we examined the lagged longitudinal association in a prospective general-population-MTurk-sample (N = 318). In Study 3, we experimentally tested the effect of an affective-mentalization-intervention on an induced depression state in MTurk-participants (N = 691). Results: Affective mentalization is negatively related to depression severity in patients diagnosed with, rs(668) = -.30, p < .001 (Study 1) and predicted depression severity over time and above the lagged-criterion, β = -0.06, p = .049 (Study 2). Exposing state-depressed participants to an affective-mentalization-intervention significantly reduced depression states (d = 0.38) compared to state-depressed participants and did not differ from no-treatment-control-participants (Study 3). Discussion: Affective mentalization relates to the development and maintenance of depression states and severity, and interventions employing affective mentalization might reduce depression severity.