The role of emotional intelligence in increasing mental health of school principals

The main purpose of this research was to study emotional intelligence and its relation with mental health, gender and level of work of the school principals of Khorramabad city. In this descriptive correlational study 139 school principals of Khorramabad city were selected by randomized stratified method. In order to gather the data, two questionnaires of emotional intelligence and mental health inventory were used. The collected data were analyzed by using Pearson correlation coefficient, t-test and one-way analysis of variance. On the basis of findings of the study, there was a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and mental health (p< 0.000). Furthermore, the results showed that the men principals had a higher scores as compared to women in relation to emotional intelligence (p<0.001), but there was no variation among primary, guidance and high school principals according to their emotional intelligence. with regard to positive relationship between emotional intelligence and mental health of principals, in order to improve emotional intelligence, it is required that the senior managers of education organization provide short- time training in behavioral sciences to increase mental health of school principals.