Study findings revealed that about 20 percent of the adolescents in residential treatment prematurely dropped out of the programs. Overall, the study showed that the residential treatment of adolescents with severe behavioral problems succeeded in keeping up to 80 percent of the adolescents within the programs. In addition, many of the adolescents showed significant improvement with regard to their behavioral and emotional development. These findings compared favorably with the outcome figures of previous research into the effectiveness of residential care for youngsters with behavioral and emotional problems conducted in the Netherlands and other countries. In the last decades high dropout rates were seen in residential care for problematic adolescents, largely due to unmanageable problem behavior, like delinquency, aggression, noncompliance to rules, and running away. This study of 105 adolescents from 4 different residential programs explored the effectiveness of residential care specifically designed to treat adolescents with severe behavioral problems. The investigated treatments were: the standard program of enhancement of social competence by behavioral modification and three specific programs: psychodynamic treatment, structured community living, and adventurous learning. The clearly defined nature of the treatment programs investigated, together with the high skill level of the group workers that provided the treatments, are possible explanations for the lower dropout figure found in this study as compared to the previous studies. Tables, references