Mental health need and psychiatric service utilization patterns of refugee children in Turkey: A comparative study

•The refugee children face a broad range of war-related traumatic events.•ADHD was the most common psychiatric diagnosis in clinic-referred refugee children.•PTSD and MDD were more prevalent in refugee children than non-refugee peers.•Refugees with ADHD and PTSD were less likely to early dropout from mental healthcare.•Clinicians should be aware of unique features of mental health services for refugees. Turkey is hosting three and a half million of refugee people from Syria and it is the leading refugee hosting country. Despite previous study findings indicating high rates of psychiatric morbidity among refugee children, little is known about the mental health service utilization patterns of refugee children in Turkey. We aimed to investigate psychiatric service utilization pattern and clinical profiles of refugee children and compare the findings with non-refugee children who applied to the same child psychiatry service in Istanbul. We determined sociodemographic characteristics, psychiatric diagnoses, and the number of visits among refugee children in comparison to non-refugees. Predictors of early dropout in refugees were analysed using logistic regression. Our sample comprised 91 refugee children (31.9% female, mean age = 9.02 years) and 82 non-refugees (34.1% female, mean age = 9.32 years). A broad range of war-related traumatic events was reported by the refugee children. The most prevalent traumatic events were hearing shootings or blasts (87.3%), witnessing clashes or bombardment (68.8%), and exposing to corpses or mutilated bodies (33.3%). Even though depression (28.6%) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (22%) were more common among refugee children, ADHD (36.3% in refugee vs. 47.6% in non-refugee) was the most common disorder in both groups. Refugee children were attended fewer appointments for mental healthcare than non-refugee children (p