Emotional maltreatment has been called the most elusive and damaging of all types of maltreatment for a child, and represents the core issue and most destructive factor across all types of child abuse and neglect. This characteristic of negative parent-child relationship has recently received scientific attention with acknowledgments that such neglect the most frequent forms of maltreatment experienced by children and adolescents and has detrimental mental health consequences. With attention given to employment of evidence-based programs as programs with proven effectiveness, examining the effectiveness of various programs for emotional maltreatment is of high theoretical and practical importance. Programs that target other forms of child maltreatment have been subject to several meta-analyses. However, the effectiveness of programs for emotional maltreatment has not been examined under the lens of meta-analysis, and are thus still under much debate. Implementation of meta-analysis in this stage of saturated research on the emotional maltreatment is a crucial step in the further understanding of this phenomenon, and will enable concluding imperative theoretical and practical implications. Thus, the objective of the proposed research project is to conduct a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of identification, prevention and intervention programs for emotionally maltreated children. Beyond its practical implications (e.g., pointing to identification and treatment programs that are evidence-based), the proposed research may offer a theoretical contribution, heretofore unapplied, to the understanding of parental practices that have the most crucial impact on the child’s holistic well-being: mental and physical. This study will be conducted in the Berkeley School of Public Health, under the guidance of Prof. Ozer and in collaboration with Prof. Lieberman form UCSF and Prof. Katz from U. of Washington.