Examinig the effectiveness of CBT based social skills program on aggression, anger management and communication skills of emerging adults who are convicted of violent crimes

Prisoners who were convicted of violent crimes struggle anger and aggression related problems both before and after entering penitentiaries. For this reason, programs aimed at anger and aggression were implemented in penal institutions around the world within the scope of rehabilitation work. This research has two purposes. The first one was to find out the profiles of male prisoners in emerging adulthood, who were convicted of violent crimes, and to identify their educational needs in terms of social skills. The second one was to examine the effectiveness of a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) based Social Skills program on aggression, anger management and communication skills. In the first phase of the study, interviews were made with 46 prisoners between the ages of 18-25 who were convicted of violent crimes in Antalya Type E Closed Penitentiary Institution. Some demographic data were collected on the prisoners' ages, educational status, last job, health status, drug use stories, family characteristics, and reasons for being in prison. In addition, information was collected on the extent to which they considered themselves adequate in anger management, what social skills they needed training, and in which subjects they wanted to change or improve themselves. The data obtained from individual interviews were analysed and the needs of prisoners in terms of social skills are determined. Later a CBT-based Social Skills Training program was develoed. In the second phase of the study, a controlled experimental study was conducted. The sample of the experimental study consisted of 18 (8 experiments, 10 control) male prisoners. A CBT based social skills training program composed of 8 sessions was developed by the researcher and administered to the participants in the experimental group, while the participants in control group did not receive any training. Buss and Perry Aggression Scale, Continuous Anger and Anger Expression Style Scale and Communication Skills Scale were used to collect data. In order to analyse the qualitative data, the answers of the prisoners were entered to the excel program. Then, the frequencies of the prisoners' answers were calculated. The data obtained from the pre-test and post-test were analysed using SPSS V22. First, the Mann Whitney U test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference in the pre-test scores, and then the Wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to find out whether there was a significant difference between the prisoners' pre-test and the post-test scores of scales. The findings of the research revealed a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the participants in the experimental group in terms of the physical aggression, hostility, anger and verbal aggression scales, which were the sub-scales of the Aggressiveness Scale. It was determined that there was no significant difference between the participants' Continuous Anger and Anger Expression Style Scale pre-test and post-test scores. In addition, no significant difference was found between the anger expression and anger expression sub-scales of the Anger and Anger Expression Style Scale. However, a significant difference was found between the other subscales, continuous anger and anger control pre-test and post-test scores. A significant difference was found between the communication skills pre-test and post-test scores of the participants in the experimental group. A significant difference was found between the pre-test and post-test scores of the ego supportive language, effective listening, selfrecognition/self-disclosure, empathy, which were the subscales of Effective Communication Skills Scale, but there was no significant difference between the pretest-posttest scores of the I-language subscale. Findings demonstrated that the CBT based social skills training program was effective in reducing the aggression scores of prisoners, increasing their scores of anger control and communication skills. Therefore, it may be suggested that such CBT based social skills training programs which aims at improving anger control and communication skills should be developed and administered to emerging adult prisoners who were convicted of violent crimes. Key words: Aggression, emerging adult, social skills, anger management, communication skills