The Association between Emotional Intelligence and Depressive Symptoms Among Nurses in a Malaysian Private Hospital

Nurses are predisposed to depression due to the nature of their work, where it is emotional demanding. Since depression is a type of mood disorder, emotional intelligence is believed to act as a protective factor against depression among emotional labours. The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between emotional intelligence and depressive symptoms among nurses in a private hospital in Malaysia. A total number of 125 respondents participated in this cross-sectional study. Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale was used to measure emotional intelligence among respondents whereas Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale-Revised (CESD-R) was used to measure depressive symptoms among respondents. The collected data was analysed by utilizing Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 22.0. This study had found a weak negative association between emotional intelligence and depressive symptoms (r=-0.217, p=0.015). Specifically, self-emotion appraisal (r=-0.237, p=0.008), use of emotion (r=-0.209, p=0.019) and regulation of emotion (r=-0.242, p=0.006) were found to have a negative association with depressive symptoms. On the other hand, others’ emotion appraisal was the only dimension which showed that it does not have significant association with depressive symptoms (r=0.013, p=0.882). It can be concluded that nurses who possesses higher level of emotional intelligence tend to experience lower level of depressive symptoms. Hence, any effort of increasing the level of emotional intelligence among nurses should be done in order to lower the risk of depression.