We carried out a retrospective descriptive study to determine prevalence and risk factors for tardive dyskinesia (TD) among psychotic patients treated with conventional neuroleptics in 4 centres in Saudi ArabiRecords of patients who had been taking > or = 1 conventional neuroleptic for > or = 6 months from January 1997 to December 2000 were examined; 151 patients were included in the final analysis. Only 51 had TD; another 59 (6.8%) patients had drug-induced Parkinson disease. Duration of treatment (P < 0.001), higher doses of neuroleptics (P < 0.01) and age over 40 years (P < 0.01) were associated with TD. A statistically significant difference in prevalence was found between Arabs (23.5%) and Afro-Arabs (45.5%) (P < 0.01). Overall prevalence of TD among psychotic patients was 5.9%.