Investigation of the relationship between alexithymia, depression and emotional intelligence levels in women presenting to a psychological counseling center

The purpose of this study was to compare depression, alexithymia and emotional intelligence in adult women according to some sociodemographic variables such as age, marital status, employment status, having children, presence of a past psychiatric admission and diagnosis, physical disease and trauma history, and also examining the relationship between these three concepts. The sample of the study consists of 59 adult women who presented to a private psychological counseling center in Ankara's Keçiören district and who voluntarily agreed to participate in the research study.The data obtained in the study were collected by the Personal Information Form, Beck Depression Inventory, Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAÖ-20) and Emotional Intelligence Feature Scale-Short Form. As a result, while there was a negative correlation between depression and emotional intelligence (EI) and alexithymia and EI, there was a positive correlation between depression and alexithymia. Accordingly, depression and alexithymia scores were lower in those with higher EI levels, and depression scores were high in those with higher alexithymia scores. In terms of marital status, married participants compared with the single ones, got higher scores from self-control, which is the sub-dimension of EI. It was found that those who have children and children at school age have significantly higher scores than others in terms of EI self-control dimension. On the contrary, it was observed that those having children scored significantly lower in terms of sociability dimension of EI, compared to the others. It was also observed that those who had a psychiatric diagnosis and those who used psychiatric medications scored lower in EI (total score) and EI self-control dimension. Likewise, those with psychiatric diagnoses scored lower than the other participants in the well-being dimension of EI. In conclusion, having observed that depression, which is one of the biggest public health problems in the world, is well associated with alexithymia and EI, EI and alexithymia might be taken into consideration in future depression research.