Social skills training is a psychotherapeutic technique used to teach social skills to individuals with severe mental disorders. It involves demonstrating skills through role plays, engaging clients in role plays with feedback, and encouraging practice. Some key social skills taught are initiating conversations, making requests, expressing feelings, resolving conflicts, and making friends. Social skills training aims to improve communication, independence, and goal achievement. It addresses deficits in expressive behaviors, receptive behaviors, interactive behaviors, and situational factors that affect social performance. Studies found social skills training to be encouraging for clinically depressed populations by directly addressing interpersonal difficulties.

1. SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING FOR SEVERE MENTAL DISORDERS
Mr. A.R. ALAGARSAMI
Mr. KOTARI PUTESH

2. Social Skill:
The ability to express both positive and negative feelings in the
interpersonal context without suffering consequent loss of social
reinforcement.
Such skill is demonstrated in a large variety of interpersonal contexts . .
and it involves the coordinated delivery of appropriate verbal and
nonverbal responses.
Situation such as having a casual conversation and making friends,
expressing feelings or obtaining something from another person all require
the use of social skills.
(Hersen & Bellack, 1976, p. 562)

3. Why are social skill important:
People with psychiatric illness usually experience many problems in
their relationships with others, including treatment provides, family
members and other clients the problems results in difficulties in
community adjustment and improvised quality of life.
For many clients poor social functioning is related to inadequate
social skills.

4. Social Skill Training
Social skill training is a set of psychotherapeutic techniques based on
social learning theory, that has been developed to teach social skills to
individuals.
It uses same methods that were developed before 20 years for
assertiveness training.
It involves several steps:
To provide rationale or help the client to understand why it is important
to learn the skill.
To demonstrate skill in the role play.
Engaging the client in the role play.
Involves providing feedbacks to the client and suggestions for
improvements.
Clients are encouraged to practice on their own.

5. What type of social skills can be taught?
A wide variety of skills can be taught depending upon the clients
needs some of the most common skills to teach psychiatric patients
including
Initiating and maintaining conversations.
Making a request from other people.
Expressing feelings.
Resolving conflicts.
Making friends and being assertive.

6. How Social Skills training helps?
Better communication.
To become more independent.
Enable to achieve goals.
For example:
Before initiating a session each members meets with the group
leader, in which the group leader will helps the group members
identify his or her own personal goals to work on in the group.

7. Components of Social Skills
Expressive behaviours
Speech and content
Paralinguistic features ( Voice value, speech rate, pitch, intonation)
Non Verbal behaviours ( Eye contact, posture, facial expression,
proxemics, kinesics)
Receptive behaviour (Social Perception)
Attention to an interpretation of relevant cues and emotion recognition.
Interactive behaviours
Responding timing, use of social reinforces and turn the talking.
Situational factors
Social reasons (Knowledge of social demands based on the specific
situations)

8. Factors Affecting Social Performance
Psychotic symptoms
Motivational factors Goals Expectancies for success and failure
Affective states Anxiety Depression
Environmental factors Lack of reinforcement for efforts Lack of
resources Social isolation
Neurobiological factors Information-processing deficits Negative
symptoms Medication side effects

9. Social Skills Training Sessions
Session 1
Listening - Attend to speaker and acknowledge what is said.
Meeting New People - Introduce self
Introducing Others
Conversations - Know how and when to converse with another person/persons
Ending a Conversation
Session 2
Asking a Question; Asking for Help; Asking a Favor
Asking for Help with a Problem
Following Instructions
Session 3
Sharing
Interpreting Body Language - Pay attention to facial expressions and body movements.
Playing a Game

10. Cont….
Session 4
Suggesting an Activity
Working Cooperatively
Offering to Help
Session 5
Saying Thank You
Giving a Compliment
Accepting a Compliment
Rewarding Self
Session 6
Apologizing
Understanding the Impact Your Behaviour Has on Others
Demonstrating the Ability to Understand Behaviour of Others

11. Social skill training with this clinically depressed population are
encouraging and they hypothesize that efficacy of the treatment in large
part is due to its direct attack of the interpersonal difficulties of our
patients.
(Hersen, M.,1984)
Social skill imbalances, not merely deficits, may be important indicators of
clinical distress. Behavioral interventions that bring extreme skill dimensions
into balance with other social skills may be an important addition to social
skills training that focuses on improving overall social skill deficits.
(John E.Perez, 2007)

12. Reference:
Bellack, A. S. (2004). Social skills training for schizophrenia: A step-
by-step guide. Guilford Press.
Perez, J. E., Riggio, R. E., & Kopelowicz, A. (2007). Social skill
imbalances in mood disorders and schizophrenia. Personality and
Individual Differences, 42(1), 27–36. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2006.05.011
Hersen, M., Himmelhoch, J. M., Thase, M. E., & Bellack, A. S.
(1984). Effects of social skill training, amitriptyline, and psychotherapy
in unipolar depressed women. Behavior Therapy, 15(1), 21–
40. doi:10.1016/s0005-7894(84)80039-8

13. THANK YOU