Effectiveness of Group Psycho Educational Training of Emotional Intelligence on Alexithymia and General Health in Iranian Students

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of psycho educational group training of emotional intelligence (EI) on improving scores of alexithymia and general health in Iranian students. 36 university students were selected as participants and were randomly assigned to three groups. Participants were evaluated using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) at pre and post test and one month after the completion of the training sessions. One group (Training) received two hour weekly psycho educational sessions of group EI training for four weeks based on the theoretical frame work of Salovey and Mayer. Another group (Information) received a self-study pamphlet about EI and members of a third group (Waiting) were put in a waiting list and were given the training after two months. Analysis of variance revealed that EI training had the following significant effects: the intensity of two aspects of alexithymia, namely difficulty identifying and describing feelings, as well as two aspects of general health, namely depression and anxiety, decreased significantly in the Training group as compared to the other groups. No significant difference was observed between the Waiting and the Information groups in terms of alexithymia and general health. Findings show support for the effectiveness of psych educational training to improve alexithymia and general health.