Mental health is one of the most important public health issues, because of its major contribution in decrease of global burden of diseases. This study investigates the prevalence rate of mental disorders in General population aged 18 years and over in (kashan city, Iran 2005).

This was a descriptive cross sectional study that was conducted via classified- randomized sampling. At stage one, by using the general health Questionnaire (N= 1800) and stage two by using clinical interview based on checklist DSM- IV by two psychiatrists;546 ones among 606 questionable people participated and 60 ones did not participated. Data were analyzed using Spss v. 16 and OR, CI and Chi-square test.

The overall prevalence of mental disorders was 29.2% (women 35/5% and men 21.2%). The most prevalent disorders were mood disorders and Anxiety disorders respectively (9.3%),(4.7%).In 505 subject with mental disorders, major depression (8.2%) and generalized anxiety disorder (7.2%) were the most prevalent and 7.8% of people had one mental disorder at least. The prevalence was higher than in adult aged 56-65 years (35.8%), widow (35.8%), illiterate (42.8%) and unemployed (38.8%) in this study. Significant difference was found between genders, education, marital status variables with mental disorder.

This results show that psychiatric disorder in kashan city is higher than previous research in this region (1995).Although this prevalence is less than cities like Qazvin & Shahrekord, but it is higher than other city. There fore prevention programs and treatment psychiatric disorder in this city is of great priority.