Two hundred consecutive applicants were categorized as to socioeconomic status at the time they requested a psychiatric consultation. By definition the population includes only residents of the Sate of California and of the County of Los Angeles who are unable to afford private psychiatric care. Thus upper middle class and upper class patients are excluded. One-third of the patients failed to keep their initial appointment. There was a general relation between socioeconomic status and appointments kept, with a greater percentage of the lower groups failing. In these as well as several other observations, the patients in the sales and clerical category tended to behave less like the rest of the white collar group, and more like the group of unskilled or unemployed. With this exception, there was also a relation between social class and somatic complaints offered during the initial evaluation, with patients from lower classes offering more complaints. This appears to be class linked, since in our clinic the lowest class had the highest percent of neurotic patients, the white collar group resembling the lowest class, and the blue collar group being more often diagnosed as having personality disorders. Of the 68 patients who completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, comparison of the mean scores on the Hypochondriasis scale yielded results consistent with the findings related to somatic complaints in the interview; the lowest classes more often deviated from the norm, again with the exception of the group of sales and clerical personnel. When the patients were divided into employed and unemployed groups, a striking difference was found in the treatment recommendations. Only one of 30 unemployed patients was recommended for individual psychotherapy, whereas approximately one-fourth of the white collar and blue collar groups had such a recommendation. When the discharge recommendations were considered, there was a much more frequent tendency to recommend referral to non-psychiatric resources for the unemployed, as compared with employed patients. These data substantiate the relevance of a sociological evaluation of psychiatric patients in a clinic setting if treatment consonant with the patients'' expectations is to be offered. It is the authors'' opinion that traditional forms of treatment will prove inappropriate for a large majority of such patients.