Psychological effect of an intervention of emotional support for hospitalized children

This paper presents the analysis of the results obtained after applying an intervention based on emotional intelligence (EI) and another based on games, named juegos varios (JV), to hospitalized children, interventions that are aimed to reduce negative affect (NA) and maintain or increase positive affect (PA). Two groups of hospitalized children were analyzed: The first received an EI intervention and consisted of 27 patients with an average age of 10.21 years and standard deviation of 2.52; the second received a JV intervention without a psychological foundation, consisting of 20 patients with an average age of 9.85 years and 2.96 standard deviation. In both groups the NA and PA were measured using the Rate Your Day Scale before and after either intervention. The analyses indicate that the JV intervention decreases NA, while the IE intervention decreases NA and increases PA. We conclude that both interventions improve the emotional state of hospitalized children.