Objective - To collect data on the interface between general practice and psychiatry in Southern Italy and to shed light on attitudes, opinions and behaviours of general practitioners regarding psychological/psychiatric problems. Design - Postal questionnaire survey on the management of patients with psychological/psychiatric problems and on its correlation with demographic and other professional characteristics of the partecipant physicians. Setting - General practices in Bari (a Southern Italy's town). Main outcome measures - Comparison between responders and total population using chi-square test and percentages of answers to the different questions. Results - 20% of practition- ers returned the questionnaire, with a significantly higher number of those who specialized than in the total population. Training activities in psychiatry, demanded by 94% of the sample practitioners, are quite regularly pursued by no more than 13% of them actually. 56% report a 10-30% psychiatric morbility in their practices. Only 19% do agree to regard law 180 as «a real advancement in psychiatric care». 53% use to refer to the pychiatrist less than 10% of their psychiatric patients (60% of these showing anxious-depressive symptoms). 25% of psychosomatic disorders are prescribed an antispasmodic drug while «cerebroactive» and «tonic» (non-specific) compounds are respectively used in 75 and 23% of cases of psychic fatigue and poor cognitive performance. Conclusions - The data obtained may be not easily applied to the general source population due to the low percentage of responders. According to the sample, the perception of the difficulties in the management of psychic disturbances (which are still very common in the everyday practice), the demand for larger opportunities of specific training and of co-operation with psychiatrists (differently from the presently poor interaction) and the need of a greater rationalization of pharmacological treatments seem worth being underlined.