Skills Training Programs for Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

This paper surveyed programs that trained psychiatric patients in living, learning and working skills. The programs were examined in terms of the degree of skill acquisition attained by the patient. Several conclusions drawn from this review are: a) Psychiatric patients can learn skills. b) Less than half of the programs surveyed provide patients with a structured learning situation that enables the patients to generalize the skills they are learning to outside the training. c) The Skill Acquisition Rating Scale provides a systematic means by which programs can be compared in terms of the degree to which skills are acquired by the patients. 4) The Scale also acts as a guideline for designing new programs that insure at least generalization of the skills being trained.