This review focuses on facial affect (emotion) recognition in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders other than autism. A systematic search, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify original articles published prior to October 2011 pertaining to face recognition tasks in case-control studies. Used in the qualitative synthesis were: 2 studies on schizophrenia, 18 on mood disorders, 16 on anxiety disorders, 4 on eating disorders, 14 on ADHD and 9 on conduct disorder. Our review suggests that there are abnormalities in facial emotion recognition in a wide range of child psychiatric disorders and that these are likely to have a negative effect on both family and peer relationships. Scope for further research has been identified. (Contains 6 figures.)