LIFE SKILLS

DESCRIPTION OF THE STRATEGY

The term life skills refers to a broadly defined set of skills and competencies needed to
survive and prosper in society. These skills range from such basics as bathing and dressing,
include study, work, and leisure activities, and extend to maintaining interpersonal
relationships and advanced problem-solving skills.
Though many manualized therapies now include life skills components, life skills
interventions are most commonly primary prevention strategies implemented in either a
broadly targeted or universal manner. By increasing social competence, problem-solving
skills, knowledge of risk factors, self-esteem, and communication skills, life skills
interventions aim to decrease individuals' vulnerability to risk factors, thereby preventing the
development of dysfunction, psychopathology, and other undesired outcomes such as drug
use, smoking, and teen pregnancy.
The broader category of life skills has been grouped into domains and subdomains in a
variety of different ways. Some of these taxonomies are driven by more global theoretical
considerations. Most groupings, however, are tailored to a specific population of interest (e.g.,
developmentally disabled adults, delinquent youth).
Despite differences in the conceptualization of the exact number and content of skill areas, all
life skills models contain components in three main areas:
(1) social skills,
(2) problem solving, and
(3) education.
Social skills include such competencies as communication skills, interpersonal relationship
skills, pro-social behavior, and understanding social expectations in different settings.
Problem solving includes emotion regulation and self-control, decision-making skills,
learning to access community resources, and working with others.
Education, in its broadest definition, refers to any portion of a life skills program that focuses
on increasing knowledge rather than teaching and honing a skill. The education component of
a life skills training program may include information on health promotion, suicide
prevention, substance abuse, preventing unwanted pregnancy, choosing a career, using public
transportation, or proper hygiene, to name just a few of the possibilities.
Life skills training programs used as universal interventions seek to minimize the
effects of a wide range of negative life events by enhancing the participant's ability to
successfully cope with life stresses. Good communication skills, advanced problem-solving
strategies, and knowledge of resources in the community and how to access them are viewed
as powerful protective factors that serve to reduce the effects of the majority of risk factors
and negative life events.

In more targeted life skills interventions, a particular outcome of interest, the risk factors
associated with that outcome, and an at-risk population are identified. Next, a decision is
made as to which skills, abilities, and knowledge are most likely to minimize those risk
factors. Based on the characteristics of the at-risk population and practical limitations on
intervention, a delivery method is selected. Finally, the skills training components are adapted
to the specific needs of the targeted population (e.g., culture, geographic location), the method
of delivery, and the exact skills and knowledge being taught.
Life skills interventions have most commonly been implemented in classroom settings either
with populations deemed at risk or as universal prevention programs. As with other
prevention and intervention programs targeting the prevention of negative outcomes in
adolescence and adulthood, it is highly preferred to begin life skills interventions before or
during pubertal onset rather than after (i.e., middle school rather than high school).
Life skills interventions have also been designed as adventure-based programs, outpatient
psychoeducational groups, athletic programs, inpatient groups, and individual coaching
sessions. After classroom-based delivery models, adventure based is the most common mode
of delivery. The adventure programs (i.e., Outward Bound, Adventure Therapy) seek to
enhance the efficacy of life skills training with the use of experiential learning techniques.

RESEARCH BASIS
Life skills training has been widely tested and empirically supported as both a universal and
targeted prevention method. The most common application and empirically investigated target
is substance abuse prevention. Though there has been some debate over the methodology of
trials of specific life skills training packages as prevention programs targeting substance use,
the majority of research has found life skills approaches to be generally efficacious. Other
common outcomes that life skills training strategies are intended to prevent include suicide,
teen pregnancy, eating disorders, obesity, delinquency, mental disorders, and general health
problems.
Follow-up data in studies of life skills prevention trials generally support increased
knowledge, retention of skills, increased internal locus of control, and increases in other
desirable psychological characteristics. The positive outcomes have shown good retention for
long periods, years in some cases. These gains in knowledge and skills, however, do not
always translate to significant changes in the targeted behaviors or outcomes in groups
receiving the intervention. For example, although a group at risk for depression that receives a
life skills intervention may show an increased understanding of depression, ability to identify
the onset of depressive symptoms, competence at formulating an effective plan for increasing
their mood, and extensive knowledge of the family and community resources available to
assist them in combating depression compared to an at-risk group not receiving the
intervention, tests of differences in postintervention rates of depression between the two
groups are often nonsignificant.

RELEVANT
TARGET
EXCEPTIONS

POPULATIONS

AND

Life skills training components are incorporated in many manualized and nonmanualized
treatments for adults and children. As a stand-alone intervention, life skills training generally

targets youth between late childhood and early adulthood. Life skills training is designed to
teach the skills needed to be a successful adult in a complex society. By teaching these skills
to adolescents and young adults in a timely manner, it is hypothesized that they will avoid
many negative outcomes that might be arrived at through inadequate preparation for the
challenges of adult life.
Within the noted conceptual framework, nearly all adolescents fall into at least one, and
generally more than one, target population. Life skills training has been used with populations
including, but not limited to, students at risk of dropping out of school, young adults deemed
to have inadequate preparation for employment, prevention of drug, alcohol, and tobacco use,
youth from disadvantaged (i.e., low socioeconomic status [SES]) households, languageimpaired students, underachievers and marginalized racial, ethnic, and cultural groups,
sexually active teenagers, and adolescents with low-self esteem and poor body image.

COMPLICATIONS
It is important to note that life skills training programs developed for one ethnic, racial, or
cultural group ought not to be applied to another group in a cookbook fashion. For example,
role playing is one of the most common techniques throughout skills training programs for
both teaching and practicing new skills. Before a suicide prevention program developed on a
white urban population is used on a Native American reservation, however, tribal taboos
prohibiting pretending to kill or pretending to want to kill oneself must be taken into account.
Other factors such as acceptable levels of emotional expression within a community, fear of
losing face, discomfort with revealing information about oneself or one's family, and
differences between the ethnicity of the instructors and the participants should be taken into
account when designing a skills training program for a specific population.
Much of the specialization of a skills training program occurs in the educational components.
Care must be taken when adapting the educational components of a skills training curriculum
that maladaptive behaviors not be normalized for an asymptomatic at-risk population. Such
normalization may result in iatrogenic effects. For example, normalization of restrictive
dieting or purging for a population of female college students with poor body image may well
result in an increase of eating disordered behaviors.
The greatest complication with successful implementation of a skills training program lies in
the selection of relevant risk factors and understanding how those risk factors relate to the
outcome of interest. Risk factors relate to outcomes in a variety of ways, some causal and
some not. Some risk factors are merely correlates of an outcome of interest and have no
temporal precedence or understood pathway of direct effect on that outcome. Such risk
correlates are a poor choice for intervention efforts. Some risk factors, which may be more
easily assessed, may serve as proxies for true causal risk factors that are harder (or even
impossible) to assess directly. Alternatively, a proxy risk factor may indicate the presence of a
more global set of risk factors, in which case, targeting that proxy factor will likely miss the
true causal process it represents. Some risk factors may serve moderating roles that affect the
individual's response to treatment rather than playing a direct role in the development of the
disorder or outcome targeted for prevention. Many risk factors may also be fixed and
immutable to change, making efforts to target those factors futile. Finally, risk factors may
work together or form independent chains of causal processes that lead indirectly to the
outcome of interest, with each risk factor varying in its contribution and directness of impact
on the development of a disorder or negative outcome. Broad approaches to intervention such

as life skills training, if not carefully targeted and thoughtfully designed, may result in
intervention efforts targeting fixed, proxy, and noncausal risk factors, which in turn results in
the dilution of efficacy and the diversion of resources that might be more usefully employed
in interventions that target true causal risk factors. Thus, life skills training interventions are
best employed where the processes by which specific risk factors lead to negative outcomes
are clearly understood and appropriately targeted. For example, inclusion criteria among
participants in interventions might be employed to increase the likelihood of specific
intervention effects. Overly general broadband approaches to prevention frequently result in
the waste of time, money, and effort, with few resulting treatment effects.

CASE ILLUSTRATION
Sam was a bright, socially withdrawn, 12-year-old seventh grade boy who earned average
to aboveaverage grades in school. Sam had few friends, and he infrequently spent time with
those few friends he did have. Although Sam did not meet diagnostic criteria for any anxiety
disorders, his mother reported that both she and several members of her immediate family
have received treatment for anxiety-related problems, including social anxiety. Sam spent
more time with friends and earned all A's until he entered the seventh grade. His mother also
reported that up until the seventh grade, Sam spent a great deal of time on his schoolwork and
would become upset if he did not get every question and problem correct. Sam's schoolwork
was done haphazardly and quickly. He had been observed being teased by older students, and
responded with increased withdrawal and avoidance of groups of peers. Sam began to spend
most of his free periods and lunch hours in the school library. In addition, Sam described
schoolwork and striving for high grades as too stressful, despite his stated desire to do well
in school. Sam was viewed by his mother and his teachers as coping poorly with stress and as
at risk for anxiety problems, poor school achievement, worsening peer relations, and
depression.
Sam was entered into the school's peer group life skills training program. Students met
biweekly with same age, gender, and grade peers. The program focused on prevention of
anxiety, depression, and school-related problems through stress management and coping. This
life skills approach was aimed at training students to cope not only with present-day stresses
but also with high school and beyond, when demands increase and become more complex.
The life skills program consisted of a sequence of an introduction to stress, and of teaching
general and then specific coping, stress management, and social skills. After an educational
approach, including the overview of stress and learning general coping and stress
management skills, the program was based on a standard A-B-C cognitive behavioral model.
The program focused on first identifying antecedents, that is, teaching students to recognize
sources of stress. Once antecedents were identified and recorded, behaviors were observed
and recorded. Behaviors were broadly defined as any behaviors performed in response to a
stressful event and included cognitive (e.g., thoughts and attributions), physiological (bodily
responses such as increased heart rate), and overt or voluntary levels of behavior. In addition,
consequences that occurred during and after particular behaviors were predicted and then
observed and recorded in between biweekly group meetings. Participants maintained a daily
rating of stress using the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS).
Sam's specific skill training focused on applying coping and stress management strategies to
his thoughts and behaviors about school achievement and his thoughts and behaviors about
peer relationships. The problems were addressed separately, and Sam's school achievement
was addressed first, because his SUDS ratings for schoolwork and worries were highest. After

recording stress triggers, Sam identified behaviors such as social withdrawal and
consequences of those behaviors such as having fewer friends and increased sadness. Sam
was able to generate solutions by applying general skills already learned to the stress and
subsequent withdrawal and sadness. As Sam began coping more effectively by challenging
catastrophic cognitions and substituting study time for escape reading, he began to see
improvements in his grades. His teachers provided additional reinforcement through praise
and increased attention in the classroom. As Sam's school achievement improved, he also
noted stress from his self-imposed expectation of perfect scores on all assignments and tests.
Again, previously learned strategies were applied. In this case, Sam engaged in behaviors
incompatible with the stress trigger of perfect schoolwork, such as setting a goal of getting no
more than two or three answers incorrect on his daily assignments. Finally, as his schoolwork
SUDS ratings declined, Sam applied similar strategies to peer relationships. When withdrawal
and avoidance of his peers were resisted and Sam substituted engagement with friends,
additional improvements in mood, anxiety, and peer relationships followed.
Timothy R. Stickle and Neil M. Kirkpatrick
Further Reading

Entry Citation:
Stickle, Timothy R., and Neil M. Kirkpatrick. "Life Skills Training." Encyclopedia of
Behavior Modification and Cognitive Behavior Therapy. 2007. SAGE Publications. 15 Apr.
2008. <http://sage-ereference.com/cbt/Article_n2072.html>.