Background 
Socioeconomic factors may play a key role in the prevalence of several childhood Neuro-behavioural, developmental and psychological problems. There is currently limited evidence to explain the causality of the observed consistent association across different countries.  
Children living in poor socio-economic neighbourhoods are reported to be at higher risk of school drop-out, imprisonment, negative emotional states and more health-related problems when compared to their peers in more affluent settings.  The children are exposed to high levels of environmental risk factors including chronic stress due to high levels of crime, discord and other threatening events.  
We evaluated the socio-economic characteristics of children and young people attending two clinics of the local Community-Paediatric unit of a Mid-Eastern Scottish NHS Trust over an 12-month period.  

Methods
A retrospective review of all patients seen in two Community Paediatric clinics in NHS Fife between June 2016 and Jan 2017 was carried out.  
The data zone for each patient was identified to estimated the socio-economic status (SES) using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) 2016.  
Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between the prevalence of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) in different socioeconomic groups.  

Results 
A total of 543 patients were seen, corresponding to 2.1% of children’s population, aged between 2 months and 18 years 6 months (average of 8 years, 8 months), 74% males. 
The greatest proportion of patients lived in the most deprived 60% (Quintile 1 to 3) of the community (78%).  The Spearman Rank Correlation was -0.9, with p value of 0.083, suggesting that the SES distribution accounts for 81% (R2) of the observed variation (Fig 1).  There were no statistically significant differences in the gender ratio, average age, number of NDPs, or number of professions per patient in the distribution of patients among the 5 deprivation areas (Table 1).

Conclusion
This study confirms that the socio-economic characteristics of the children population have a significant influence on and distribution of various neurodevelopmental, behavioural and psychological disorders.  The Scottish Government’s various initiatives to reduce health and wellbeing inequalities will help to reduce the overall burden of these disorders in the short- and long-terms.
Poverty is considered the single biggest threat to child well being and efforts directed at reducing socioeconomic inequalities that begin in childhood are urgently needed.

PREVALENCE OF CHILDHOOD NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS INFLUENCED BY SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS: EXPERIENCE FROM A SCOTTISH LOCAL AUTHORITY