In this paper, we develop a general theory for adaptive nonparametric estimation of the mean function of a non-stationary and nonlinear time series model using deep neural networks (DNNs). We first consider two types of DNN estimators, non-penalized and sparse-penalized DNN estimators, and establish their generalization error bounds for general non-stationary time series. We then derive minimax lower bounds for estimating mean functions belonging to a wide class of nonlinear autoregressive (AR) models that include nonlinear generalized additive AR, single index, and threshold AR models. Building upon the results, we show that the sparse-penalized DNN estimator is adaptive and attains the minimax optimal rates up to a poly-logarithmic factor for many nonlinear AR models. Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate the usefulness of the DNN methods for estimating nonlinear AR models with intrinsic low-dimensional structures and discontinuous or rough mean functions, which is consistent with our theory.