Immediate Effects of a 16-Week Life Skills Education Program on the Mental Health of Adult Psychiatric Patients

ABSTRACT

A total of 206 (105 men, 101 women) adult psychiatric patients participated in life skills programming 5 half days per week for 16 weeks. Psychosocial adjustment was assessed pre- and post-treatment with the three primary scales of the Holden Psychological Screening Inventory (HPSI). A multivariate pre- versus post-treatment analysis resulted in a nonsignificant effect for the covariate age (p= .136) but significant effects for time (p<.0005), gender (p<.0005), and the time by gender interaction (p= .003). Depression Symptomatology improved significantly for both men and women, whereas on the other two HPSI scales (Psychiatric and Social Symptomatology) statistically significant improvements were only obtained for women. The Social Symptomatology effect size for women (.25) was small and of the same order of magnitude as a treatment as usual psychiatric patient control sample and is therefore primarily a retesting effect. The effect sizes for Depression Symptomatology for men and women (.77 and .87, respectively) and Psychiatric Symptomatology for women (.57) were large and at least four times larger than the control sample. Improvement in Depression Symptomatology has considerable support in the literature but improvement in Psychiatric Symptomatology does not and will therefore require replication.

Key Words:

• Life skills
• pre-post designs
• psychiatric patients
• ypsychosocial adjustment
• ytreatment effectiveness