Background: It's known worldwide that depression is becoming a major health problem and its prevalence is increasing. main objective of this study is to find out the prevalence of depression among patients attending a general psychiatric clinic, and study their sociodemographic and clinical features. Methods: Files of patients attending a private psychiatric clinic in Khartoum in the period June 2005- June 2010 were reviewed. Only those with a diagnosis of depression were chosen, sociodemographic date and clinical features were documented and results were shown below. Results and discussion: Total numbers of patients with depression were 137 (11.4%). Females were more than males (56.2%), the majority are between ages 41-60 (40.9%), married (65%), (14.9%) had family history of psychiatric disorders and (52%) had previous history of psychiatric treatment. Depressed mood is the commonest symptom (98.5%), loss of interest (91.9%), reduced energy (57%), guit feelings (17.9%) and (35.8%) of our samples expressed suicidal ideations. The commonest type of somatic symptom is generalized aches and pain (30.7%), (18%) were psychotic. Conclusion: The present study is a retrospective descriptive study, based on a private psychiatric clinic sample. It provided useful baseline for more comprehensive field based studies, to try to aid planning and development of services to meet the needs of the population.