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.

This work is truly a guidebook-succinct, concrete, clearly written, and unambiguously specific. Based upon learning principles, the text naturally presents a linear and hierarchical exposition. The reader is never in doubt about what steps should follow what step. Each topic is broken down into readily assimilable components.

This unique manual presents cognitive-behavioral social skills training (CBSST), a step-by-step, empirically supported intervention that helps clients with schizophrenia achieve recovery goals related to living, learning, working, and socializing. CBSST interweaves three evidence-based practices--cognitive-behavioral therapy, social skills training, and problem-solving training--and can be delivered in individual or group contexts. Highly user friendly, the manual includes provider scripts, teaching tools, and engaging exercises and activities. Reproducible consumer workbooks for each module include skills summaries and worksheets. The large-size format facilitates photocopying; purchasers also get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials. Listed in SAMHSA's National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices

In the 10 years or so prior to original publication in 1978 new theories and discoveries in the social sciences had given a scientific basis and new impetus to the development of social skills training as a form of therapy. This book explores the progress made with this idea and gives practical guidance for therapists based on several years’ experience with the technique. The book provides an account of the latest ideas at the time, about the analysis of social behaviour – non-verbal communication, social skill, rules, analysis of situations, etc. The different techniques for training and modifying social behaviour – some old, some very new – are described and compared, with detailed accounts. There is a careful critical review of follow-up studies of social skills training and other forms of social therapy on in-patients, out-patients and volunteer subjects. The second part of the book consists of a manual for assessing deficits and difficulties, and for training in ten main areas of social deficiency such as observation, listening, speaking, asserting and planning. A rating scale, questionnaire and user’s booklet of training exercises is included. The book should be of interest, not only to psychiatric professionals – psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists – but to many others, such as social and community workers, teachers, prison officers, and lay people who may be interested in forming self-help groups, either on their own or with professional guidance.

Research and experience show that children and adolescents who struggle with emotional, behavioral and social problems do improve when they learn prosocial skills. Social skill instruction, therefore, can be a vital component in the treatment planning for a child diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Teaching Social Skills to Youth with Mental Health Disorders is a guide for therapists, counselors, psychologists, educators, and other practitioners trying to help these youth get better.

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).