The Effectiveness of Emotional Intelligence Training on the Mental Health of Male Deaf Students

BACKGROUND: Deafness is a common neural-sensory impairment which leads to lower life quality, withdrawal, social activities reduction, and rejection feeling. So, it is important to plan suitable training programs for mental health promotion of deaf children. Emotional intelligence training is one of these programs. The present study was aimed to determine the effectiveness of emotional intelligence training on the mental health of deaf students. METHODS: In this semi-experimental study with pretest and posttest design, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was completed in 40 randomly selected boy deaf students with mean age of (12.48) years old before and after the intervention. The aim of the questionnaire was obtaining information of somatic symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, and depression as well as general health. The students were assigned in experimental and control group randomly and in equal. Experimental group participated in 12 sessions (each session lasts for 50 minutes; twice a week) and were trained by emotional intelligence program, but control group did not. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used for analyzing the data. RESULTS: There was a significant difference (P<0.001) between experimental and control group according to somatic symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, depression and general health as a whole after participation in intervention sessions. CONCLUSION: There was a significant decrease in somatic symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, depression and increase in general health of experimental group. Our findings showed that emotional intelligence training program led to promote of general health of boy deaf students.