Answer: Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and regulate our emotions as well as helps to recognize the emotions of other people. It is the heightened awareness of self-awareness, social-awareness, relationship management, empathy and these can be an effective tool to handle mental health disorder.

Emotional Intelligence is a heightened awareness of one’s own and others’ emotions:

•       Self-awareness: It’s very important to learn how to balance your social performance with emotional integrity and to know the strengths and weaknesses.

o   For example: The self-awareness of an IAS officer helps him to balance their policy implementation.

•       Self-regulation: Self-regulation is the way to regulate our emotions and where to use it to understand the emotions of others.
•       Social awareness: Social awareness of a public administrator is widely recognized as important for communication, management, problem-solving and relationship building.

o   For example: IAS officer, Poma Todu has been helping villagers in Odisha by visiting Naxal affected hostiles zones to hear and counsel their grievances.

•       Self-management: Emotions are important pieces of information that tell you about yourself and others. With the ability to manage stress, you can make choices that allow you to control impulsive feelings and behaviors.

Emotional intelligence as a tool to support a person with a mental health disorder:

•       Effective Counselling: Mental health professionals can better understand disorders like anxiety and depression.

o   For example: Person with symptoms of anxiety and depression, take steps to manage this disorder before overwhelming.

•       Empathy: It is a crucial component of emotional intelligence; however, empathy level change when you experience depression.

o   For example: Mental health professionals with empathetic feelings help to negate the negative sentiments of a person with mental health disorder.

•       Emotion regulation: emotion regulation is the ability to adjust an emotional state. Emotion regulation includes identifying, evaluating and attending the feelings.

o   For example: a person who has poor emotion regulation strategies usually faces the condition of mood polarities and stress.

•       Breaking down the social stigma: Mentally ill person often faces, the isolation from society. Hence social awareness with good emotional intelligence breaks down the social stigma.

o   For example: Immanuel Kant postulated a principle of treating every person as an ‘end in itself’. The same principle can be applied for mental health disordered people.

•       Overcome bullying impact: It has detrimental effect on mental health of even sound minds and leaves apart those encountering mental health issues.

o   For example: Tennis player, Naomi Osaka withdrew herself from the French Open.

Thus, emotional intelligence can be a valuable tool for individuals to cope with the mental health challenges by developing emotional regulation, effective counselling, and effective communication skills, individuals can improve their mental health and build resilience during these difficult times.