Increasing Appropriate Behavior of Explosive Chronic Psychiatric Patients with a Social-Skills Training Package

Social-skills training was used with four long-term chronic psychiatric female inpatients. Targeted behaviors within training sessions were tailored for each subject on the basis of pretreatment observations. Training involved instructions, modeling, role-playing, and feedback, and was effective with behaviors assessed within a multiple-baseline design. Trained skills generalized to the ward setting, and arguing and fighting of these patients were markedly reduced. Treatment effects maintained during postchecks up to three months.