OBJECTIVES: The study of new patients in a specific specialty offered another insight into the epidemiology of diseases and the mode of health care delivery. The aim of the study was to investigate the spectrum of diagnoses and medications among the patients who visited the psychiatric clinics for the first time in Taiwan. METHODS: The data sources came from the historical claims datasets of 1,000,000-person cohort from 1996 to 2006, offered by the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. The focus was on the patients who had never visited any psychiatric clinic from 1996 to 2005 and had visited one in 2006. The analyses of these patients’ first visits included the distributions of the age, sex, primary diagnosis in codes of ICD-9-CM (the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification) and prescribed drugs classified into ATC (Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical) codes. RESULTS: Among the 1,000,000-person cohort, 8,226 patients (4,393 females and 3,833 males; mean age 39.4 ± 22.5 [SD] years) had their first visits to one of 330 psychiatric clinics in 2006. Among these new patients, 1460 were under age 18 and 1352 over age 65. Neurotic disorders (ICD-9-CM: 300) were most frequently seen diagnoses in 3117 visits, followed by affective psychoses (296) in 918 visits and adjustment reaction (309) in 629 visits. The top 10 diagnostic groups accounted for 83.5% of all new visits. Medications had been prescribed in 6610 (80.3%) visits with an average of 2.4 ± 1.2 drug items. The most frequently prescribed drug groups were antidepressants (ATC: N06A) in 3651 visits, anxiolytics (N05B) in 3212 visits, hypnotics and sedatives (N05C) in 3125 visits and antipsychotics (N05A) in 979 visits. CONCLUSIONS: The people in Taiwan seemed unafraid of visiting psychiatrists. The issues of over-medication and polypsychopharmacy deserve further attention.