Behavior therapy with children and adolescents: a twenty-year overview.

A twenty-year overview of behavior therapy with children and adolescents is presented. The various techniques and their application to relevant major DSM-III-R categories are critically discussed. It is concluded that behavior therapy has made great progress and has proven applications in child and adolescent disorders but that its precise roles, comparative efficacy, and complementarity to other forms of psychotherapy and other treatments remain to be demonstrated. Much uncertainty stems from the relatively poor state of research in other forms of psychotherapy.