This popular manual presents an empirically tested format and ready-made curricula for skills training groups in a range of settings. Part I takes therapists and counselors step by step through assessing clients' existing skills, teaching new skills, and managing common treatment challenges. Part II comprises over 60 ready-to-photocopy skill sheets. Each sheet--essentially a complete lesson plan--explains the rationale for the skill at hand, breaks it down into smaller steps, suggests role-play scenarios, and highlights special considerations. Of special value for practitioners, the 8 1/2" x 11" format makes it easy to reproduce and use the practical materials in the book.

In this book we have attempted to identify skills which are needed by the psychiatric nurse, and in doing so to identify a body of knowledge unique to the professional psychiatric nurse. The book has been written to demonstrate the basis of a skills approach for both the experienced and the inexperienced nurse to build upon, for we believe that psychiatric nurses, due to both their training and their particular mixture of interests, are weil equipped to be in the forefront of psychiatry as a developing art and science. We hope that this book in some small way helps this development. Some of the more recent advances in psychiatric nursing have been rein forced by the publication of a training syllabus for mental nurses (English and Welsh National Boards, 1982). This document highlights the need for a change from a medical model to a social model and from a task-oriented leaming experience to a skills approach. We have attempted to reflect this change in emphasis by including such aspects as personal development and self-aware ness, human sexuality, the nursing process and counselling skills.

It is perhaps trite to refer to human beings as social animals, but never theless it is true. A substantial portion of our lives is spent in interactions with other people. Moreover, the nature, quality, and quantity of those interactions have a tremendous impact on behavior, mood, and the adequacy of adjustment. Faulty interpersonal relationship patterns have reliably been associated with a wide variety of behavioral-psychological dysfunctions ranging from simple loneliness to schizophrenia. Most "traditional" analyses of interpersonal failures have viewed them as consequences or by-products of other difficulties, such as anx iety, depression, intrapsychic conflict, or thought disorder. Con sequently, remediational efforts have rarely been directed to interper sonal behavior per se. Rather, it has been expected that interpersonal relationships would improve when the source disorder was eliminated. While this model does account for some interpersonal dysfunctions (e.g., social anxiety can inhibit interpersonal behavior), it is not adequate to account for the vast majority of interpersonal difficulties. In fact, in many cases those difficulties either are independent of or underlie other dysfunctions (e.g., repeated social failure may produce depression or social anxiety).

Revised, extended and updated, this edition will continue as the core textbook for students of interpersonal communication as well as for professional groups such as counsellors, doctors, nurses, social workers and psychologists.

The AJN Book of the Year award-winning textbook, Psychiatric Nursing: Contemporary Practice, is now in its thoroughly revised, updated Fourth Edition. Based on the biopsychosocial model of psychiatric nursing, this text provides thorough coverage of mental health promotion, assessment, and interventions in adults, families, children, adolescents, and older adults. Features include psychoeducation checklists, therapeutic dialogues, NCLEX® notes, vignettes of famous people with mental disorders, and illustrations showing the interrelationship of the biologic, psychologic, and social domains of mental health and illness. This edition reintroduces the important chapter on sleep disorders and includes a new chapter on forensic psychiatry. A bound-in CD-ROM and companion Website offer numerous student and instructor resources, including Clinical Simulations and questions about movies involving mental disorders.

"Social skills training (SST) continues to be a widely accepted and recommended intervention for improving the psychosocial functioning of persons with schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses. The book begins by providing useful background information, including the nature and importance of social skills (Chapter 1), updated evidence supporting the effectiveness of SST (Chapter 2), and assessment and goal-setting for SST (Chapter 3). The next group of chapters addresses the practicalities of providing SST groups and are also similar to the second edition, including methods for teaching social skills (Chapter 4), starting an SST group (Chapter 5), choosing curricula for an SST group (Chapter 6), tailoring SST to meet individual participant needs (Chapter 7), and solutions to common challenges encountered when providing SST (Chapter 8). The third edition of this book differs from the second edition in the variety of special topics related to SST that are addressed. While the second edition had only one such chapter on providing SST to individuals with comorbid substance use problems, in addition to retaining (and updating) this chapter (Chapter 9), the third edition also has six additional chapters on special topics, including younger individuals who are either at risk for psychosis or recovering from a first episode of psychosis (Chapter 10), technology-based communication skills (Chapter 11), SST with older individuals (Chapter 12), providing SST in residential or inpatient settings (Chapter 13), cultural factors when providing SST (Chapter 14), and gender and sexual identity issues and sexual harassment (Chapter 15)"--