Original article
Short- and Midterm Effects of Emotional Intelligence Training on Adolescent Mental Health

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.02.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To analyze the effects that an emotional intelligence (EI) educational program based on the EI ability model had on adolescent mental health immediately and 6 months after completion of the training.

Methods

A pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design with a treatment and a control group was used; 479 Spanish adolescents (47.4% male, mean age of 13 years) were involved in the study. Adolescents were recruited through several schools in three Spanish cities. The 2-year training program involved 24 sessions lasting 1 hour each, conducted `weekly during 6 months of 2009 and 2010. Data on psychological adjustment, mental health, and negative affect were collected at baseline, at the end of the training program, and 6 months later. Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance.

Results

Students who participated in the EI educational program reported fewer clinical symptoms compared with students in the control group, and these differences persisted 6 months after the conclusion of the program.

Conclusions

These results suggest that EI programs created to develop skills in perceiving, facilitating, understanding, and managing emotions can be effective at promoting mental health in adolescents.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

Adolescents were recruited through several schools in three Spanish cities. A total of 479 participants (47.4% male) with a mean age of 13 (standard deviation [SD] = .87, range = 11–16) years were involved in this project. The population was selected by multiple-step, simple random sampling. First, location was taken into account, and then at least two different schools within each city were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. A total of 322 adolescents (51.6% male) with a

Descriptive analyses

Table 2 summarizes the means and SDs at each time (pretest, posttest, and follow-up) for the trained and control groups.

Main analysis

After controlling for age and for the pretest differences between trained and control groups, the multivariate analysis of covariance showed that the multivariate main effects for condition (trained vs. control group) Wilks lambda [18,449] = .905, p = .0001; η2 = .095 and for sex Wilks lambda [18,449] = .883, p = .0001; η2 = .12 were statistically significant. The interaction

Discussion

Findings from this study showed evidence that our EI training program, based on the ability model of EI [5], is effective at promoting several skills related to mental health in adolescents. If promoting mental health means decreasing the incidence of several risk factors and behavioral disorders in the young population [31], then the present study suggests that our evidence-based training enhances adolescent mental health by decreasing negative affect scores and several clinical symptoms,

Acknowledgments

This research was partially funded by project SEJ-03036 of the Spanish Department of Education and Science.

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