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Social skills training consists of learning activities utilizing behavioral techniques that enable persons with schizophrenia and other disabling mental disorders to acquire interpersonal disease management and independent living skills for improved functioning in their communities. A large and growing body of research supports the efficacy and effectiveness of social skills training for schizophrenia. When the type and frequency of training is linked to the phase of the disorder, patients can learn and retain a wide variety of social and independent living skills. Generalization of the skills for use in everyday life occurs when patients are provided with opportunities, encouragement, and reinforcement for practicing the skills in relevant situations. Recent advances in skills training include special adaptations and applications for improved generalization of training into the community, short-term stays in psychiatric inpatient units, dually diagnosed substance abusing mentally ill, minority groups, amplifying supported employment, treatment refractory schizophrenia, older adults, overcoming cognitive deficits, and negative symptoms as well as the inclusion of social skills training as part of multidimensional treatment and rehabilitation programs.

Skills training can be effectively conducted by paraprofessionals, with durability and generalization of the skills greater than that achieved by occupational therapists who provide their patients with psychosocial occupational therapy.

Background: The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) has been the workhorse of psychopathology assessment in studies of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders for over 40 years. Our goal was to evaluate the discriminant validity of the BPRS across the broad spectrum of persons with schizophrenia. Sampling and Methods: The total sample of 565 subjects with schizophrenia (84%) or schizoaffective disorder (16%) came from eight separate studies conducted under the aegis of the UCLA Clinical Research Center for Schizophrenia and Psychiatric Rehabilitation over a period of 15 years. The total sample could be divided into three subsamples based on illness chronicity and degree of refractoriness to treatment: Recent-onset patients had been ill for less than 2 years (n = 178), stable chronic patients between 2 and 19 years (n = 243) and treatment-refractory patients for more than 19 years (n = 144). Exploratory principal components analysis and varimax rotation were performed on the total sample. The results of each of the three subsamples were compared to the total sample using a correlation matrix and by calculating a coefficient of congruence. Results: A 4-factor solution was considered the most interpretable for each subsample, reflecting the same 4 components identified in the total sample: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, agitation-mania and depression-anxiety. Correlation coefficients and coefficient of congruence were very high, ranging from 0.91 to 0.98. Conclusions: The consistency of the 4-factor solution of the 24-item BPRS across the range of subjects, from first psychotic episode to long-stay, institutionalized patients, supports the use of these factors and this instrument as a whole to track changes over time and with treatment in research and clinical samples.