A Pilot Study of a Brief Inpatient Social-Skills Training for Young Adults With Psychosis

Objective: Psychotic disorders are serious illnesses that are most amenable to early intervention. Though inpatient units are typically the first care setting for young people with psychosis, almost all early intervention work has been limited to outpatient settings. Social difficulties are a core feature of psychotic illnesses, and despite need for empirically supported social-skills treatments there are few interventions intended specifically for the developmental phase during which psychosis manifests (i.e., late teenage to early adult years). Method: Our group implemented an adapted social-skills training intervention (SST) designed for young adults on a psychiatric inpatient unit. Nineteen young adult inpatients (aged 18-35) with psychosis participated. Psychiatric symptoms and aspects of social functioning, including reported social self-efficacy and performance on social skills role-plays, were assessed before and after SST participation. Results: Preliminary data demonstrate improvements in both self-report and performance-based measures of social functioning after SST participation. Conclusions and Implications for Practice: These findings, though preliminary, support additional, larger-scale investigations of this SST among young adults with psychosis. Further, multidisciplinary collaborations are valuable in providing specialized care for young adults with psychosis who are receiving inpatient psychiatric care.