He looks remarkably good for a former child star. For one thing, he’s alive. :)
Based on his own difficult adjustment to life after being a child actor, he founded an organization to protect and help other kids:
“In 1990, following the suicide of former child star Rusty Hamer, Petersen founded a child-actor support group, A Minor Consideration, to improve working conditions for child actors and to assist in the transition between working as a child actor and adult life, whether in acting or in other professions. In July 2009, he successfully petitioned a California court to appoint a law guardian to oversee the earnings of the widely-publicized octuplets born to “octomom” Nadya Suleman.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Petersen