[Important child psychiatric areas of research--retrospect and prospects]

Objectively and subjectively limiting factors have to be kept in mind when considering research topics which have been given up and those which are actually followed. Five examples for research topics which have been dropped are given, all those topics survived in some way. They are discussed under the headings: knowledge about diagnoses, course of disorder, intervention, pathogenesis and development. Referring to the same headings, another five recent research approaches are presented, which may be subsumed under ecological child psychiatry. Their complexity requires a model-guided prospective multi-level research approach, which allows to join the biological and psychosocial research line, and which allows to sufficiently consider the sequence of pathogenetic events, the influence of developmental aspects, and the effects of interventions. This kind of research, however, requires a reorganisation of research structures and funding.