ABSTRACT. Depression rates in women are twice that of men In certain groups of women depression exceeds 40 percent. These groups include urban, poor, young mothers, and women who use primary health care facilities. We hypothesized that rates of depressive symptoms in rural women users of primary care would exceed those reported in population studies. Depressive symptoms were expected to be associated with common risk factors for depression. To test these hypotheses, 181 rural women, ages 18 to 52, were interviewed by telephone using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Of these, 41.4 percent reported depressive symptoms exceeding the cutoff score of 16 on the CES-D. The mean CES-D score for the entire sample was 15.3 and was 27.6 for women scoring over 16 on the CES-D. Young, unemployed and poorly educated women were most likely to report depressive symptoms.