| Social skills training (SST) is becoming increasingly popular, and there is a great need for it. Many mentally-ill patients have problems which are mainly in the area of social behaviour or relationships, for example 2530% of adult neurotics. In the general population there are many people who cannot make friends, or who cannot cope with the opposite sex, or who say that they are shy or lonely. These people are isolated and unhappy through lack of social skills. |
| Social skills are important at work. SST is widely used to train teachers, interviewers, doctors and nurses, managers and supervisors, policemen, and for many other occupations which involve dealing with people. Those with effective social skills are more likely to be successful at work their pupils learn more, their patients recover faster, their subordinates are happier and work harder, their speeches or lectures are better received, and they themselves are more successful. People with inadequate everyday social skills become anxious and depressed, may become patients, find it more difficult to get a job or more difficult to cooperate successfully with other people at work, and may lose their jobs. |
| Many people travel abroad, for holidays or work, or have to deal with members of other cultures in their own country. SST can help here, by discovering the gestures, rules, or other features of the other group's behaviour, and by finding the commonest sources of friction and showing how to avoid them. |
| SST is not always readily available. It can be given to patients if there is a trainer on the staff, and is often given to occupational groups, once a training scheme has been established. It is much less widely available to the general public, and I wish that it could be provided at leisure or adult education centres. |
| What is the best method of SST? In the past people learnt their social skills by doing them, on the job in the case of work skills. We now know that this is a slow and often ineffective method people may never discover the best skills. Laboratory exercises are much more effective, especially role-playing with video feedback, though |
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