The correlation between emotional intelligence and mental health among students of Jiroft city

Mental health is one of the most important factors in promotion of human evolution. People who are good at managing their own and other's emotions have more social support and satisfaction. The aim of this study was to determine correlation between emotional intelligence and mental health among students of Jiroft city. This study is a descriptive-correlational study. Which was conducted on students in universities of Medical Sciences, Azad and University of Jiroft in 2013. In total 674 students were selected by Stratified Sampling method. Three questionnaires of demographic characterizes, “Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Bradbry and Graves” and “General Health Questionnaire” (GHQ) were used to collect data. To measure validity, content validity and reliability of the questionnaires test-retest was used. Data was analyzed by SPSS/17. In total 394 subjects (58.5%) were suspect of mental health problems. The regression logistic showed that there was correlation between mental health and gender (P=0.008), mental health and residence status (P=0.036). However, the correlation between mental health and university of study and marital status was not significant. The average score of EQ was 92.07±15.29. Regression analysis indicated a significant association between mental health and self-management variables (OR=0.937, P=0.002) and social consciousness (OR=0.917, P<0.0001). Spearman test showed a significant correlation between mental health and EQ (r= 0.238, P<0.0001). The results of this study reflects the positive correlation of emotional intelligence on mental health. It is suggested that planning and training the emotional intelligence is a step to promote students mental health.