Out of the 87 patient participation groups that were known to the National Association for Patient Participation as having been established by the end of 1983, 17 (25%) are not functioning. The general practitioners concerned with these non-functioning groups were interviewed to identify problems that they had had in keeping the group going and to seek possible explanations for the problems. Fourteen of the groups had stopped functioning in part owing to lack of interest by patients. Groups become non-functioning often in the first year of starting up, and this may be because of the nature of the practice population that they seek to represent.