Servicemembers face a variety of challenges during their time in the military. Many of these challenges can result in significant psychological stress, which is associated with a variety of poor mental health outcomes. Suicidal thinking is an especially serious concern that poses a significant risk to the military, as more Service members now die each year from suicide than from active combat.  Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions in adaptive ways. Higher EI is associated with a variety of positive outcomes, such as increased resilience (Brackett et al., 2004). To build these vital skills, we recently developed an online training program that rapidly develops EI.  We hypothesized that there would be a significant reduction in suicidal cognitions following the Emotional Intelligence Training (EIT) program compared to a matched placebo program in active-duty military Servicemembers.

Our sample included 156 active-duty military participants with a mean age of 30.3 years of age (SD=5.7).  Participants were randomly assigned to either the active EIT (NEIT=84) or placebo awareness training (PAT) (NPAT=72). Our EIT program focuses on a core set of trainable EI skills, such as identifying cognitive distortions, emotional identification, and goal-directed decision making, meant to increase EI. The matched PAT program focused on becoming aware of the external environment and did not involve any emotional or social training activities.  In this study participants remotely completed their assigned training over the course of 35 days. Additionally, our participants completed the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) before and after their training. The PAI contains a variety of measures derived from 344 questions that assess various psychiatric issues on a continuous scale. One of these predictive measures is a suicide potential index. This scale considers a variety of behaviors on the assessment and uses them to create a suicidal potential score. We used a repeated measures ANOVA to identify if there was a significant effect of intervention condition on changes in suicide potential.

We found a significant group (EIT vs PAT) x time (pre-training vs post-training) interaction on PAI suicide potential scores F(1,154)=4,561, p<.034,  ηp2 = .029). Those that completed the EIT program experienced a significant reduction in their suicide potential from pre- (M=53.869, SE=1.263) to post-training (M=51.845, SE=1.305; p=.014). In contrast, the PAT condition did not significantly change from pre-training means (M=52.778, SE=1.364) to post (M=53.319, SE=1.410) (p=.540). There was no significant difference between the suicide potential scores between the EIT (M=52.778, SE=1.364) and PAT (M=53.869, SE=1.263) groups pre-intervention (p=.558).

The recently developed EIT program was effective at reducing suicidal thinking of military Service members on the PAI.  This is a critical finding for potentially protecting military personnel from suicide using an easily administered online program.  Further research should focus on if this program could serve as a preventive measure in Servicemembers before stressful situations, such as combat or other difficult deployment situations.  It would also be useful to conduct further research to reduce the duration of the program without reducing effectiveness.