Life skills training for chronic schizophrenics.

This research evaluates the effectiveness of training chronic schizophrenic patients in interpersonal and instrumental skills for coping adequately in community living situations. The subjects were male, chronic schizophrenic inpatients with histories of multiple rehospitalizations. Twenty-eight volunteers were randomly assigned to either the life skills training or to a traditional Veterans Administration rehabilitation program. The life skills program included 7 weeks of training in interpersonal and instrumental skills considered important for community tenure: interpersonal communication skills, nutrition, health, finance, time management, and utilization of community resources. Acquisition of skills was assessed by means of a Life Skills Inventory (LSI) and five attitudinal and affective measures pretreatment and post-treatment. The results of the comparison of outcome measures showed the treatment group superior to the control in interpersonal skills, finance, health, use of community resources, and total LSI score. They also showed greater improvement on most of the attitudinal and affective measures. Patients are being followed to measure duration of community placement and maintenance of skills.