Teaching Social Skills to Youth with Mental Health Disorders

Here is a guide for therapists, counselors, psychologists, educators, and other practitioners to incorporate the teaching of social skills as a component of treatment for children diagnosed with mental health disorders. Research and experience show that children and adolescents who struggle with emotional, behavioral and social problems do improve when they learn prosocial skills. Included is an introduction to the DSM-IV-TR and other mental health assessment and evaluation tools and guidance for how to individualize treatment plans while considering children's developmental, cultural, behavioral, emotional social, genetic, and biological variables. Following a discussion of the importance and effectiveness of skill teaching in the treatment of mental health disorders, the authors provide a series of charts that list the social skills that caregivers and treatment providers might target for each of more than a hundred DSM-IV-TR diagnoses common for children and adolescents. Examples of treatment plans show how social skills can be integrated into plans across different settings and levels of care - home and school, foster care, residential group home, and psychiatric facility. Teaching Social Skills to Youth with Mental Health Disorders can help and encourage any professional striving to improve the lives of troubled youth.