According to a survey conducted last year at the University of Duhok for college students, 37.1% of students showed that college negatively affected their mental health, 65.9% suffered from anxiety, and 48.4% indicated that anxiety negatively affects their studying process.

A study that was done by Universiti Teknologi found that Emotional Intelligence has been significantly and positively associated with academic achievement.

Emotional intelligence refers to how well a person can identify, control, and evaluate emotions within themselves and others. This ability helps students empathize with others and themselves and deal with difficult situations without getting frazzled. It affects relationships, academic performance, and how students handle pressure. It also helps students better analyze situations and better interact with people around them, and tackle academic issues with greater panache. Emotional intelligence allows Students to better understand a situation instead of overthrowing it and upending the metaphorical cart entirely. Emotional Intelligence can be broken down into four components that help students stay motivated, manage their anxiety, and understand themselves and their surroundings better, which are;

1- Self-awareness -  helps students recognize their emotions and how they affect their behavior. It also allows them to recognize their strengths and weaknesses and most importantly, to be self-confident. 

2- Self-management -  helps control impulsive feelings and behaviors, healthily manage emotions and anger, take the initiative, follow up with commitments and adapt to changing circumstances.

3- Social awareness - students with social awareness feel more comfortable with their colleagues and lecturer; they recognize the power dynamics in a group and organization and are great leaders. 

4- Relationship management - students with good relationship management inspire and influence others, can manage conflicts very well, and are good team leaders.