Fostering Emotional Intelligence and Coping with Diabetes and Evaluation of Quality of Life

Self awareness or knowing one's emotions forms the key stone of emotional intelligence. People who excel in this are able to bounce back quickly from life's setbacks and upsets. Diagnosis of a chronic illness like diabetes is one such setback that upset the whole frame of reference of the victim. Therefore, the present investigation was aimed to find out the role of emotional intelligence in effectively coping with diabetes and evaluating quality of life. 150 female diabetic patients having type II diabetes were given the scales of emotional intelligence, coping and quality of life. The emotional intelligence was measured by the Hindi version of EI (Schutte et. al., 1998) contains two sub scales measuring ability to monitor and regulates emotion in oneself and in others. On the basis of EI scores the patients were divided into high and low EI self and High and low EI others. The ANOVA findings suggested High EI self and EI Others patients were using more active and adaptive coping strategies and less maladaptive coping strategies as compared to patients having low EI self and EI others. Both EI self and EI others have also significantly predicted physical, psychological and social quality of life. In addition, for fostering emotional intelligence a coaching schedule was introduced to low emotionally intelligent group of participants and results of pre and post coaching scores of EI indicated that for monitoring and regulation of EI self was increased. The implication of these finding for diabetic patients has been discussed.