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Emotional Intelligence and Suicidal Ideation

Aryaman Singh

There are many acts which cause emotional turmoil in human beings, and suicide happens to be one of the most devastating. The loss of a loved one is a painful experience, but people suffer a unique sorrow when the loved one in question takes his/her own life. According to the World Health Organisation, approximately one million people die from suicide every year, representing a mortality rate of 16 per 100,000 or one death every 40 seconds. WHO predicts that this number will rise to one death every 20 seconds by 2020. Suicide is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 (both male and female). Another alarming statistic is that suicide among the youth is increasing rapidly, to the extent that this group is now at the highest risk in a third of all countries. It’s safe to say that suicide is a serious public health issue that demands thorough study and analysis in the name of prevention. The etiology is not completely understood yet due to the numerous factors that affect suicidal ideation. I will focus on one particular factor in this blog post, i.e. the relationship between suicidal ideation and emotional intelligence. The post will discuss the validity of emotional intelligence as a protective factor for suicidal ideation and, by extension, the act itself.
Suicidal ideation refers to contemplating suicide. This could mean anything from a fleeting consideration to a detailed plan of action. Ideation does not include the act itself. Such ideation could be the result of some form of stress. Comorbidity with other mental health issues like depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse disorders is common. Approximately 80% of suicide attempters in the US have a temporally prior mental health disorder (Nock et al., 2010).
Emotional Intelligence refers to an individual’s capacity to identify, put into thoughts, comprehend, and manage one’s emotions as well as the emotions of others. More specifically, this form of intelligence is said to consist of at least three skills, namely emotional awareness (ability to identify and name one’s emotions), the ability to harness emotions in order to apply them to tasks like problem-solving, and management of emotions (regulation of one’s emotions).
A study (Christine et al., 2009) tested whether emotional intelligence decreases the likelihood of ideation and attempts among those at risk. The results of this study indicate that emotional intelligence is a protective factor- both for ideation and attempts. Analyses revealed the driving force of the protective effect to be differences in strategic emotional intelligence (management and understanding of one’s own emotions) but not experiential emotional intelligence (perceiving emotions and putting them into thoughts).
Another study (Ciarrochi et al. 2002) studied the role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between stress and three mental health variables (depression, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation). The results indicate that stress is associated with greater reported depression, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation in individuals high in emotional perception.  It was also observed that individuals who scored low on managing other’s emotions showed greater suicidal ideation. It is important to note that the two items (emotional perception and managing other’s emotions) were statistically different from the other relative measures, implying that emotional intelligence is a separate construct. According to Abdollahi (2015), emotional intelligence has also been shown to partially mediate the relationships between brooding and reflective rumination with suicidal ideation.
In conclusion, it can be said that emotional intelligence plays an important role as an influencing factor in suicidal ideation. Research, while still in the nascent stage, indicates that emotional intelligence can be considered a protective factor against ideation and attempts. Further research is required to fully understand the extent of this protective effect.

References
·       Cha, C. B., & Nock, M. K. (2009). Emotional intelligence is a protective factor for suicidal behavior. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 48(4), 422-430.
·       Ciarrochi, J., Deane, F. P., & Anderson, S. (2002). Emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between stress and mental health. Personality and individual differences, 32(2), 197-209.
·       Abdollahi, A., & Talib, M. A. (2015). Emotional intelligence as a mediator between rumination and suicidal ideation among depressed inpatients: the moderating role of suicidal history. Psychiatry research, 228(3), 591-597.
·       Nock, M. K., Hwang, I., Sampson, N. A., & Kessler, R. C. (2010). Mental disorders, comorbidity and suicidal behavior: results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Molecular psychiatry, 15(8), 868.
·       Suicide Statistics. (2018). Retrieved from  https://www.befrienders.org/suicide-statistics
·       Nordqvist, C. (2018). What are suicidal thoughts?. Miracle News Today. Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/kc/suicidal-thoughts-ideation-193026
·       Emotional Intelligence. (n.d.) Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence

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