Social skills training methods represent a major strategy for psychiatric rehabilitation. Building skills in patients with schizophrenic and other major mental disorders is based on the assumption that coping and competence can override stress and vulnerability in reducing relapses and improving psychosocial functioning. For maximum efficiency, skills training needs to incorporate procedures and principles of human learning and information processing. Several models for skills training have been designed and evaluated, each of which has proved to be effective in raising the social competence of chronic mental patients. The "basic" model involves role playing by the patient and modeling, prompting, feedback, and reinforcement by the therapist. A "problem-solving" model of training provides general strategies for dealing with a wide variety of social situations. This model uses role playing to enhance behavioral performance but also highlights the patient's abilities to perceive and process incoming social messages and meanings. It is essential that social skills training be imbedded in a comprehensive program of rehabilitation that features continuity of care, supportive community services, therapeutic relationships, and judicious prescription of psychotropic drugs.

Social skills training methods represent a major strategy for psychiatric rehabilitation. Building skills in patients with schizophrenic and other major mental disorders is based on the assumption that coping and competence can override stress and vulnerability in reducing relapses and improving psychosocial functioning. For maximum efficiency, skills training needs to incorporate procedures and principles of human learning and information processing. Several models for skills training have been designed and evaluated, each of which has proved to be effective in raising the social competence of chronic mental patients. The "basic" model involves role playing by the patient and modeling, prompting, feedback, and reinforcement by the therapist. A "problem-solving" model of training provides general strategies for dealing with a wide variety of social situations. This model uses role playing to enhance behavioral performance but also highlights the patient's abilities to perceive and process incoming social messages and meanings. It is essential that social skills training be imbedded in a comprehensive program of rehabilitation that features continuity of care, supportive community services, therapeutic relationships, and judicious prescription of psychotropic drugs.

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This study explored the relationship between psychiatric symptomatology and the functional capacity to work. Subjects were diagnosed using DSM-III criteria and were grouped into categories of psychotic or nonpsychotic, and disabled or nondisabled, in regard to adjudication for mental impairment from the Social Security Administration (SSA). There were significant relationships between disability status and work capacity, in the direction of better performance for the nondisabled subjects. This finding reflected concordance between the evaluation procedure used in the study and the SSA's disability determination process. There was considerable overlap in work performance among subjects, however, suggesting that a functional assessment of work capacity might improve disability determination in certain cases. Results suggested that these work assessments might be as short as one or two days.

We evaluated the effects of minimally supervised, independent recreational activities on stereotypic vocal behavior in two chronic schizophrenic patients. In baseline sessions, subjects were observed during unstructured free time in the psychiatric ward. In treatment sessions, therapists presented preferred recreational materials (magazines, models, and art projects), verbally prompted on-task behavior every 20 min, and, in one condition, administered contingent tokens. Independent recreational activities reduced medium-rate self-talk in one subject and high-rate mumbling in a second subject by 60%-70%. Results were the same with or without contingent tokens. Apparent selfmaintaining characteristics of these vocal responses are discussed.DESCRIPTORS: independent recreational activities, hallucinatory behavior, stereotypic vocalizations, schizophrenic inpatients Repetitive and nondirected vocalizations are among the peculiarities that mark chronic psychiatric patients (Paul & Lentz, 1977). These inappropriate responses have been modified in a few behavioral investigations. Using a 10-min sedusionary time-out, Haynes and Geddy (1973) intermittently punished "hallucinatory" speech in a schizophrenic woman on the hospital ward, reducing it by about half. Alford, Fleece, and Rothblum (1982) Bellack, 1977), and while listening to a radio or watching television (Magen, 1983).Stereotypic behavior in retarded clients is well recognized; one intervention that has been applied with this population consists of presenting recreThe authors thank