Background. The Haiti Health Study was a door-to-door enumeration study of urban and rural residents of Haiti that aimed to determine the prevalence of social risk factors and non-communicable diseases. Lifetime episodes of major depression (MD) and panic attacks (PA) were assessed and are reported based on screening sections of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for DSM-IV, a structured diagnostic interview. Methods. Haitian Community Health Workers (CHWs) were trained to enumerate households and assess social determinants of health, take height, weight, blood pressure and blood samples with immediate testing of glucose control, creatinine and lipids and to conduct the diagnostic interview. CHWs enumerated over 2,648 households and interviewed 2,134 adults 25 to 65 years old in selected urban (n=1,427) and rural (n=707) regions to capture a representative cohort. Results. The majority (57.4%) of individuals reported “fair” overall health; 16.5% reported “poor” overall health. More women (61.1%) than men were assessed. The mean age of the sample was 40.8 (SD 11.8). Among the entire sample, 45.8% and 46.7% of participants met criteria for a lifetime episode of DSM-IV major depression and panic attack respectively; 32.7% met both. Conclusions. Very few studies of mental disorders with representative samples have been completed in Haiti; most have been conducted only among earthquake survivors. Our study characterizes depressive episodes and panic attacks in both urban and rural community samples using a structured diagnostic assessment. The prevalence of both depressive and panic attack episodes shows the need for interventions to treat in a context of low resources.