Investigations of the reformulated learned helplessness model of depression have produced conflicting results. To contrast the attributional responses of clinically depressed men and women, data were collected from 117 psychotherapy clinic outpatients. An expanded version of the Attribution Style Questionnaire was administered. Forty people similar in most of the covariates measured, except being currently in therapy, served as controls. Results showed that clinically depressed subjects reported more self-attributional replies than controls; however, some of them claimed more credit for success than responsibility for failure, a finding inconsistent with the model. Severely depressed subjects, as expected, assumed more personal responsibility for their negative life events, although the degree of responsibility did not correspond to degree of depression, suggesting the kind of depression rather than the degree may be more relevant to the model. Females more than males blamed themselves for negative life experiences, indicating that the respondents' sex more than degree of depression related to both the event and the extent to which self-attributional responses were made. (JAC)