summary
Child and adolescent psychiatry has existed as a subspecialism since the 1920s. In the early days its practitioners regarded observation as their main source of knowledge. In the period after 1970 the anti-psychiatric movement gained momentum, presenting a threat to child and adolescent psychiatrists. Later on, however, it was realised that the influence of the anti-psychiatry movement had been fairly limited and that the most important changes had occurred as a result of the introduction of the empirical method, which in turn has led to renewed interest in neuropsychiatry.