This study was designed to clarify the relationship of depressive illness to deliberate self-harm by examining DSM-III diagnoses & responses to a self-report depression inventory in adult self-harm patients. A consecutive series of 71 patients were interviewed & tested. The authors believe that DSM-III diagnoses provide a more accurate estimate than self-report inventories of the frequency of affective syndromes in a self-harm population. These findings have implications for treatment. (LH)