SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING FOR CHRONIC PSYCHOTIC-PATIENTS - A FRENCH STUDY

The aim of this article is to describe the cognitive-behavioral method s for social rehabilitation and psychotherapy of chronic psychotic pat ients which are nowadays available in French-speaking countries, then to propose a theoretical framework to help integrate these various met hods for use in our daily pratice and, finally, to expose our research in this field, especially concerning the topic of quality of life and social skills training programs. We present a study we designed in or der to assess the impact of a comprehensive social skills training pro gram upon quality of life of chronic schizophrenic patients. Starting from the point of view that a good psychosocial rehabilitation program is one that improves social skills and social functioning without neg ative effects on quality of life, we tried to show such qualities in a quite comprehensive rehabilitation program using social skills traini ng methods corresponding to the social readaptative ''modules'' from L iberman and Wallace's Social and Independant Living Skills Program - ' 'medication management module'' - followed by ''basic conversational s kills module'', and finally, a brief adapted version of ''interpersona l problem solving skills module''. We were able to observe the evoluti on of social skills and functioning of eight schizophrenic patients ha ving benefited from this program, over a one year period, and we compa red results regarding quality of life with two control groups made of schizophrenic patients, one of them having benefited from a supportive group therapy, in order to study the impact of non-specific factors. The results indicate a clear dissociation between direct benefits of s ocial skills training (knowledge, social skills, social functioning an d symptomatology) which all showed a significant improvement in the ex perimental group, and subjective benefits (self-esteem, sense of self- efficacy, quality of life) which showed no change, as well when consid ering intra-group as well as between group comparisons.