The Social Skill Training is structured as a cognitive-behavioral therapy for rehabilitation plans whereby the patient can develop and recover social skills.

To verify the effects of a literary workshop for increase assertiveness in patients with eating disorders.

Thirty-two patients consequently admitted to the Ward for Eating Disorders at the Private Clinic “Villa Maria Luigia” in the North of Italy were recruited in the study, and all of them agreed to take part in it. Of the 32 patients, 8 were randomly assigned to treatment and 24 to care as usual, being the difference between treatment and care as usual only represented by the literary workshop. The Rathus Assertiveness Schedule and Verbal Fluency Test (phonemic and semantic) was administered to all patients in the first and last week of hospitalization. The literary workshop consists in 16 weekly 45-minute group sessions. Issues of expressiveness through the use of writing are addressed during the sessions.

A significant improvement of semantic skills (t=-5.60; p< 0.01 vs. t=1.43; p=0.17), phonetic skills (t=-3.66; p< 0.01 vs. t=1.35; p=0.19) and assertiveness (t=4.47; p< 0.01 vs. t=0.94; p=0.93) was registered in the literary workshop group.

Effectiveness of the literary workshop in a rehabilitation program for patients suffering from eating disorders is suggested: improved communication and language skills might have a positive and significant impact on patients’ levels of assertiveness.

The use of standardized tools for assessment and monitoring of a rehabilitation program is strongly recommended, though not so often accomplished in clinical practice.

To describe the development and feasibility of a computerised method of assessment of rehabilitation activities based on psychometrics.

The software “SVAROSKI” was implemented by means of a relational ER (Entity-Relationship) model with a user interface managed by MS-Access. The rehabilitation activities were: Physical therapy; Locomotion, Occupational Therapy and Reality-Orientation Therapy. Patients were administered at the beginning and at the end of admission the following tests: MMSE, MODA, Barthel Index, Tinetti.

The software enables processing of test data with those obtained from rating scales at each session.

For each patient, two graphical reports are made available:

Punctual performance of each item divided by subject areas;

Overall pace of the three scales assessing rehabilitation (physical therapy was maintained for an evaluation board, partly qualitative, for the sake of the physiotherapist of the structure).

The software allows:

1) the rapid storage of the scores obtained from patients during the course of rehabilitation activities,

2) the real-time consultation of the development of therapeutic and rehabilitation,

3) the comparison of the iteration of several rehabilitation interventions on the patient.

SVAROSKY is a useful tool for analysis and monitoring of developments in the rehabilitation of the patient as a valid tool for the development of a synthesis report of the rehabilitation process.