Findings of the few psychotherapy outcome studies with depressed children and adolescents raise questions about whether or not treatments are sufficiently sensitive to developmental factors. Here we review the outcome data, then survey potentially relevant research on the cognitions, competencies, and coping behavior of depressed youngsters. Much of the work in each domain is both procedurally and theoretically adevelopmental, and the psychotherapy research does not appear to be well informed by research in the other domains. To help remedy this situation, for each domain we suggest key developmental questions that need to be answered, and we discuss implications for psychotherapy. We also propose a three-way partnership involving basic developmental research linked with research on relations between depression and various cognitive and behavioral processes, with both lines of inquiry informing the development and refinement of interventions.

In the fifty years since the emergence of the neo-evangelical movement, the connotations of the word “evangelical” have changed significantly. Richard Quebedeaux charts an evolution of the movement beginning with the “neo-evangelicalism” of its founders, continuing through the “new evangelicalism” of their children, and on to the more radical evangelicalism typified by contemporary “Young Evangelicals.” Although these transitions cannot always be delineated as clearly as Quebedeaux implies, the evangelicalism of the past fifty years has certainly proved more dynamic than static and has managed to wiggle its way out of the grasp of its neo-evangelical founders.