Abstract

Background: Obesity in children is an increasing public health issue that has an impact on both mental and physical health. Given this, the current study sought to find out if childhood overweight/obesity was associated with emotional intelligence. Method: The study included 259 children aged 8 to 12. A body mass index above the age and gender 95th percentile was considered obese, whereas an index between the 85th and 95th percentile was considered overweight. A self-administered questionnaire aimed at measuring material household wealth as a gauge of the absolute degree of socio-economic status is one of the additional data sets. In order to evaluate emotional intelligence based on traits, we used Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Child Form- Sort Form (TEIQue-CSF). Results: Mean EI score was 3.57 (SD=0.51) for all children. Boys (M=3.48; SD=0.47) had significantly lower EI score than girls (M=3.62; SD=0.53; p=0.038). Also, overweight/obese children (M=3.35; SD=0.50) had significantly lower EI score than the normal ones (M=3.68; SD=0.48; p<0.001). Children with high socio-economical level had significantly greater EI score as well as those whose mother participated in the study. It was showed that after adjusting for all participants’ characteristics, BMI (β=0.29; SE=0.07; p<0.001) and FAS (β=0.15; SE=0.06; p=0.017) were significantly associated with EI, in a similar to the univariate analysis way. Conclusion: Although the sample is small to generalize the results there is obviously a strongly correlation between lower EI and overweight/obesity. This association promotes the need for prevention program for childhood overweight and obesity.