Successful living: a social skills and problem-solving group for the chronic mentally ill

The authors describe a skills training group for chronic mental patients called Successful Living that is offered in conjunction with an outpatient medication clinic at a Veterans Administration hospital. The weekly group operates on a drop-in basis and focuses on helping patients select and attain short- and long-term goals. Goal attainment is accomplished primarily through rehearsal of needed behaviors and specific homework assignments for repeating behaviors outside the group. Goals selected by an original group of 22 participants indicate that given the opportunity, chronic patients do want to change their social situation; moreover, 88 percent of completed homework assignments, or 49 percent of the total assignments, had desirable outcomes.