Background: A high emotional intelligence and mental health makes soldiers immune to the problems and leads them to more conformity in military fields. This study aimed to investigate the relationship of emotional intelligence with mental health and demographic factors in IR army soldiers.

Materials and methods: This was a descriptive, explanatory, and quantitative study. Research population included all soldiers of a military unit in Tehran city. Of them, 350 subjects were randomly selected with simple random sampling. Three questionnaires including General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), emotional intelligence (Schutte et al.), and demographic information were used for data gathering in this research.

Results: It was shown that emotional intelligence has a significant negative relationship with mental health (r=-0.523) and its components including somatic symptoms (r=-0.328), anxiety (r=-0.388), social dysfunction (r=-0.461), and depression (r=-0.470). Also, according to the average scores of mental health components (24.74), soldiers were at a relatively high level of healthy.

Conclusion: This study indicated that emotional intelligence is highly correlated with mental health and its components among soldiers. Thus, people with high emotional intelligence are more self-reliant and have a more positive attitude to themselves. They also have a more tendency to confront the problems and solve them to reduce stress in their life.