Stereotype threat, social skills and schizophrenia

Stereotype threat is the feeling that one is the target of demeaning stereotypes and has been found to affect performance among a number of different people doing a number of different tasks. Interestingly people do not have to actually be treated in a negative way for this effect to occur, they just have to believe they are being stereotyped. People with schizophrenia are often thought to have poor social skills and a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales and the University of Queensland wondered whether this could be due to stereotype threat. They got 30 people with schizophrenia to talk to two 'confederates.' The people with schizophrenia were told that one of the confederates knew about their diagnosis while the other didn't; but in fact neither of the confederates knew that they were talking to someone with schizophrenia. Although the participants with schizophrenia did not perceive any differences in their own social behaviour those confederates who talked to someone who thought the confederates knew about their mental-health problems rated the participants' social skills as poorer.

Henry, Julie D., von Hippel, Courtney and Shapiro, Lisa - Stereotype threat contributes to social difficulties in people with schizophrenia British Journal of Clinical Psychology March 2010, 49(1), 31-41

Social skills training and schizophrenia

People with chronic schizophrenia can lack social skills. They find it hard to hold conversations with people, make friends or solve problems. Poor social skills are closely related to repetitive recurrences of schizophrenia and rehospitalizations and have been reported as important factors affecting prognosis. Patients with chronic mental illness can also suffer from low self-esteem which impedes effective interpersonal relationships and negatively affects their abilities to cope with stress and problems. Raising self-esteem is one of the most important ways of preventing recurrence and ensuring long-term success in rehabilitation among patients with chronic schizophrenia. Social skills training has been proven to be effective when delivered by psychiatrists and psychologists but little research has been done into the effectiveness of nurse-led social-skills training. A Korean study divided 66 patients into two groups comparing a nurse-led social-skills training programme with a control group. After 16 sessions those people who had received social-skills training showed a significant improvement in their conversational, interpersonal and assertiveness skills and had higher self-esteem although their problem-solving ability had not improved.

Seo, Ji-Min ... [et al] - Social skills training as nursing intervention to improve the social skills and self-esteem of inpatients with chronic schizophrenia Archives of Psychiatric Nursing December 21(6), 317-326

How video games can help you have a nice day

A team of psychologists at McGill University in Canada have been developing a series of video games to train people in social situations to focus more on positive feedback rather than being distracted and deterred by perceived social slights or criticisms. The games are based on the emerging science of social intelligence, which has found that a significant part of daily stress comes from our social perceptions of the world. The games have already produced encouraging results in the lab but the researchers wanted to see what effect they had in a more life-like situation. They studied 23 employees at a call centre in Montreal who had to click on the one smiling face among a screen of frowning ones as quickly as possible while a control group played a different game without the smiling faces. The study lasted a week with the employees filling out daily questionnaires about their self-esteem and stress levels. At the end of the study both groups cortisol levels were measured as cortisol is considered to be an important marker of stress. The group playing the game with the smiling faces had 17% less cortisol than the other group.

You can read more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/10/24/video-game-lowers-stress-hormone/1446.html

Schizophrenia, social skills and employment

Even with recommended treatments people with schizophrenia have problems looking after themselves, making and maintaining relationships and holding down jobs. Problems with social and communication skills have long been recognised to be a feature of schizophrenia but it is unclear how these problems are related to cognitive deficits and to everyday functioning. Researchers in Baltimore, U.S. compared people with schizophrenia who functioned well in the workplace with those who did less well. They found that social skills were significantly more impaired in those with poor vocational functioning and that people's levels of social skills were significantly associated with their verbal ability, processing speed and memory. However, even once all these factors had been taken into account social skill still had an independent effect on vocational performance.

Dickinson, Dwight, Bellack, Alan S. and Gold, James M. - Social/communication skills, cognition, and vocational functioning in schizophrenia Schizophrenia Bulletin September 2007 33(5), 1213-1220