Schizophrenia is associated with significant cognitive and functional deficits. As patients with schizophrenia grow older, the impact of these deficits at a personal and public health level is likely to increase. Cognitive Behavioral and Social Skills Training (CBSST) is a recently developed group therapy that increased the frequency of social activities among middle-aged patients with schizophrenia. It also increased cognitive insight, a measure of the ability to reduce confidence in aberrant beliefs. To date, CBSST has not been studied in late-life schizophrenia. In addition, its impact on medications management, an instrumental function that is particularly salient in late life, and its interactions with cognition are largely unknown.

Thus, we propose to study the efficacy of CBSST in improving social skills and medications management in patients with late-life schizophrenia, and to study the interactions between the patients' cognitive characteristics and their response to CBSST.

• Behavioral: Cognitive Behavioral Social Skills Training (CBSST) plus treatment as usual
• Behavioral: Treatment as usual (TAU)

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age 60 years and above.
• All races and ethnicities.
• Females and males.
• Meets DSM-IV TR criteria for a current diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, schizophreniform, delusional disorder, or psychotic disorder NOS.
• Clinically stable as operationalized by (1) having not been admitted to a psychiatric hospital within the 3 months prior to assessment, (2) having had no change in antipsychotic medication dosage within the 4 weeks prior to assessment, and (3) and ascertained to be clinically stable by one the study psychiatrists.
• Willingness and ability to speak English
• Willingness to provide informed consent
• Corrected visual ability that enables reading of newspaper headlines and corrected hearing capacity that is adequate to respond to a raised conversational voice.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Meets criteria for a cognitive disorder secondary to a neurological or other medical disorder affecting the ability to participate in CBSST.
• Diagnosis of bipolar disorder or current major depressive episode.
• Meets diagnostic criteria for substance use or dependence within the 6 months prior to the initial assessment except for caffeine or nicotine.
• Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) within 6 months of initial assessment.