According to WHO data, in 2020, suicidal behaviour was the third leading cause of death among adolescents worldwide, with 90% of cases occurring in adolescents from countries with low and middle socioeconomic levels. Suicidal ideation and behaviour in adolescents has become a public concern that requires a broad effort to find out how and when to prevent it. One of the protective factors against suicidal ideation and behaviour in adolescents is emotional intelligence –a set of skills that people implement to make use of their emotions and to better identify, use and manage their emotions. In fact, a statistically significant association has been detected between low emotional intelligence and high suicidal ideation in adolescents.

UPV/EHU researchers Héctor Galindo and Daniel Losada have studied the mediating and moderating effect of peer support, family support and teacher support on the relationship between emotional intelligence and suicidal ideation in adolescents. The study involving 898 adolescents concluded that “emotional intelligence does in fact affect suicidal ideation directly, but this is largely because adolescents with higher emotional intelligence are able to perceive the support they receive from teachers, family members and peers to a greater degree. And it is precisely this: the correct perception of the support they are receiving helps them reduce their suicidal ideation”, the researchers explained.

The importance of social support

Similarly, the results of the study show that family support influences the relationship between emotional intelligence and suicidal ideation. As the researchers explained, this relationship varies depending on the degree of family support an individual is receiving: “If an individual does not have any kind of family support at home, even if s/he has a high level of emotional intelligence, it does not help him/her reduce his/her suicidal ideation. Having medium or high family support, however, helps an emotionally intelligent individual to reduce his/her suicidal ideation more, compared with an individual with low emotional intelligence.”

The results also show that peer support helps emotional intelligence reduce suicidal ideation only in older adolescents. “When an adolescent is 12 years old, peer support is not as important as when an adolescent is 15 or 16 years old. And as far as teacher support is concerned, the study concluded that “an adolescent with high emotional intelligence will be able to reduce his/her suicidal ideation a great deal, regardless of perceived teacher support; just as an individual with low emotional intelligence will develop serious difficulties in reducing his/her suicidal ideation, regardless of perceived teacher support.”

In this respect, Galindo and Losada pointed out that working on emotional intelligence in the classroom is very important, “but it is even more important for these individuals to really perceive a high degree of social support. Hence the importance of getting families involved in the learning process as well, besides fostering quality peer relationships, in order to reduce one of the main causes of adolescent death: suicidal behaviour. We teachers really should take into account and encourage, as much as possible, the level of support that an adolescent is perceiving from his/her environment; the reason is that if the individual is perceiving low social support, it could happen that even if we work on emotional intelligence transversally or in terms of a subject in class, it would not have the desired effect when it comes to reducing one of the main causes of adolescent deaths: suicidal behaviour”, they concluded.  

Additional information

The authors of the study are lecturers in the Department of Didactics and School Organisation at the UPV/EHU. Héctor Galindo is a lecturer at the UPV/EHU’s Faculty of Education and Sport and teaches on the Degree courses in Pre-primary Education and Primary Education; Daniel Losada is a lecturer at the UPV/EHU’s Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Anthropology and teaches on the Degree course in Primary Education and on the Master's in Research in Socio-educational Areas.

Bibliographical reference

Héctor Galindo Domínguez, Daniel Losada Iglesias
Inteligencia emocional e ideación suicida en adolescentes: el rol mediador y moderador del apoyo social
Emotional intelligence and suicidal ideation in adolescents: The mediating and moderating role of social support
Revista de Psicodidáctica
DOI: 10.1016/j.psicod.2023.02.001