Most liaison psychiatry is practised in the general-hospital setting, but increasingly services for the physically ill are becoming community based. Family practitioners play a key role in identifying patients with comorbid physical and psychological distress. This chapter describes the developments over the last 10 years in the detection and treatment of patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) in a primary-care setting. MUS are defined as physical symptoms that doctors cannot explain by physical pathology, which distress or impair the functioning of the patient. Family doctors are faced with the whole range of physical and psychosocial health problems. Four approaches to the management of persistant MUS (PMUS) that might be employed by family doctors have been explored in randomized controlled trials (RCTs): antidepressants, exercise, psychiatric consultation and emotional disclosure. There is a need for simple, effective, evidence-based interventions that family doctors can provide for patients with PMUS.