Unravelling risks for child psychopathologies - general lessons from eating disorder research

Clarifying risks for childhood disorders is one of the core aims of research in developmental psychopathology; disseminating findings from the most robust and clinically relevant of that risk research is a core aim of JCPP. This issue exemplifies that tradition, including articles that use a range of research designs and strategies to confirm - or in some instances disconfirm - the roles of hypothesized risks. It begins with one of our occasional series of reviews of risk research: Culbert, Racine and Klump's lucid synthesis of recent findings on the causes of eating disorders, and the accompanying Commentary by Smith and Davis. These will, of course, be of special interest to those who work in the eating disorders field, but - like all good reviews - their underlying messages have a wider resonance and relevance for the field. We highlight just three issues of particular interest in this Editorial.