Background/Purpose:

There is IQ, the intelligence quotient, and EQ, the emotional quotient. EQ refers to emotional intelligence or the emotional intelligence quotient, the ability to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior. It also refers to the ability to adjust emotions to achieve one’s goals

We wondered whether patients with fibromyalgia might have a poor emotional quotient and not be able to handle their symptoms well. We administered an in-office questionnaire to evaluate EQ.

Methods:

We administered an in-office questionnaire to patients with fibromyalgia and non-fibromyalgia rheumatic disease controls. Included were 10 questions, each graded 0-4, regarding social/emotional awareness. We compared the results from patients with fibromyalgia syndrome meeting the 2010 ACR criteria for the diagnosis and those with other rheumatic diseases.

Results:

There were 160 females and 31 males in the fibromyalgia syndrome group, and 82 females and 48 males in the non-fibromyalgia rheumatic disease patient group. The mean age of the fibromyalgia patients was 52.45 years for females and 50.39 years for males. The mean age of the patients with other rheumatic disease was 55.23 years for females and 54.02 years for males. 66.5% of the FMS patients and 57.7% of the no-FMS patients were married. The mean HAQ scores in FMS patients was 3.1 and in non-FMS rheumatic disease patients was 1.7 (p 0.001).

Patients with FMS had an emotional quotient scale of 33.0 compared with 32.0 for rheumatic disease controls, p 0.84. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups.

Conclusion:

There was not a statistically significant difference between patients with fibromyalgia and non-FMS rheumatic disease patients with regard to their emotional quotient or social/emotional awareness.

It does not appear from the results of this study, that fibromyalgia patients are less equipped to handle their symptoms. Rather, their symptoms may overwhelm them because of the intensity, and not necessarily from an inability to cope with them emotionally.

« Back to 2018 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting

ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/the-emotional-quotient-in-fibromyalgia-patients-is-similar-to-rheumatic-disease-controls/