The Association between Emotional Intelligence and Depression among Medical Students in Suez Canal University

BackgroundEmotional intelligence is defined as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express ones emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically while depression is the loss of interest in daily activities that may be associated with altered dietary and sleep patterns, lowered self-esteem, feelings of guilt and worthlessness and recurrent thoughts of suicide. Previous studies that assess depression among medical students show variable results, which makes it difficult to conclude whether depression rates are higher exclusively in medical students. Moreover, previous studies have shown that emotion management leads to less stress and may allow for adaptation by allowing subjects to induce a more positive mood and may even prevent development of a mal-adaptive emotional state. AimTo improve mental health of medical students by identifying and modifying risk factors that may contribute to its deterioration MethodsOur sample size is 149 students which were picked by stratified random sampling, where stratification was done on gender and study year. Students names of all six years were collected and then split according to study year, each study year was further splitt into two groups of males and females, which were selected from, based on a computerized random sampling. Two questionnaires were used; "Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire" (TEIQue) developed by K. V. Petrides, PhD, for emotional intelligence and Becks Inventory for depression measurement. ResultsOur sample is composed of 82 (response rate is 55%) students. Depression prevalence in our sample is 39%. And it significantly correlated negatively with emotional intelligence, where the most significant factor is well-being. ConclusionStressful lifestyle of medical students and lack of extracurricular activities and skill training programs lead to lowered emotional intelligence levels and depression. We recommend that their should be psychiatric counselling available for medical students, to lower depression prevalence among them, and introduce to curriculum life skill training programs to increase levels of emotional intelligence. We also recommend further studies about risks and causes of depression in Suez Canal University medical students to lower its prevalence, contributing to a better quality of life for the future physicians and thus of the patients.