Social Skills Training for Chronic Mental Patients

Social skills training has proved to be effective in increasing the social competence of chronic mental patients. The authors describe three models of social skills training, all of which involve role playing by the patient and modeling, prompting, feedback, and reinforcement by the therapist. Many patients can benefit from the basic training model. For patients functioning at a higher level, the problem-solving model provides general strategies for dealing with a variety of social situations. The attention-focusing model, designed for highly distractible and withdrawn patients, teaches skills through constant repetition of tasks and minimizes demands on cognitive abilities. The authors emphasize the importance of taking steps to ensure that the skills learned during training are generalized to other situations and settings.