This study was conducted to obtain information about the patient population of the outpatient clinic at the Pediatric Neurology Department of the Hacettepe University Children’s Hospital. Information was collected on the socio-economic level of the parents; age, sex, education level of the patients, and the kind of diseases, physical and behavioral defects the clinic dealt with.

This information was sought out for the purpose of aiding the psychological services, within the department, in what kind of test materials to select and in giving direction to the kind of research to be carried out.

Information obtained from the 329 patients indicated that our population does not represent the average general population. The parents of our patients came from urban places, had higher educational level, represented a higher socio-economic status in terms of occupation and tended to have smaller families than would be expected in the Ankara region. As for the patients themselves, 87.2% of the school age children were attending school as compared to 62.75% of the national average. There were more male patients than female, ant this was attributed to the fact that boys are more important in the Turkish family than girls. Among the nine categories of diagnoses over 50% of the patients fell in the epilepsy category. The next most common diagnosis was cerebral palsy. The data collected on the ten categories of physical and behavioral disorders showed behavioral problems, motor defects, speech defects, retardation, and aggressiveness to have the highest incidences. A cross tabulation of these disorders with the diagnoses (with the exception of retardation due to the reason explained above) showed expected relationships.

Considering the high proportion of patients having behavioral problems it was concluded that more emphasis should be placed upon developing better evaluation techniques and methods of dealing with these problems and providing services for directing parents.