The general practitioner and the psychiatric health service in Italy after the reform: opinions and experiences in an urban district.

This paper presents an analysis of the impact of the psychiatric reform in Italy on health care delivery by the general practitioner. In an urban district of the Veneto region a survey was made on the opinions and assessments of the general practitioner about the new status of psychiatric care, on the psychiatric cases identified, and the correspondence between these opinions and assessments and the real delivery of psychiatric care. The pessimism about the psychiatric reform that emerges among some general practitioners seems to have more to do with the slow progress in creating intermediary facilities between hospital and region rather than an a priori opposition to the reform.