In recent years, studies done to determine the psychiatric disorders and their sociodemographic features have been increasing and it's been tried to identify people in need of psychiatric help and groups at risk of developing psycopathology. In this study, we attempted to identify sociodemographic features and diagnoses of patients applying to psychiatry outpatient department of our newly established faculty hospital and to determine the reflections of the two terribly huge earthquakes experienced in our region (Gölcük and Düzce 1999). For this reason, we examined retrospectively the records of patients applying to psychiatric outpatient department for 30 months before and after earthquake.

Women, married people, people having children, housewives and ages between 19 and 45 more commonly apply to our department. Significant increases have been found especially in certain anxiety disorders like PTSD, acute stress reaction and OCD, and depression after the earthquake.

Any big natural disaster like earthquake increased the risk of searching psychiatric help and of developing psychopathology, related to the losses and traumas people experienced