Abstract: Community-based rehabilitation has gradually become an important carrier for individuals’ recovering from mental disorders to integrate into society, yet insufficient social skills constitute a major barrier to their social reintegration. Supported by empowerment theory, twenty recovering individuals from Community H of City Q as research subjects are selected in the study. The causes for their deficiencies in linguistic competence, social initiative and social sensitivity from individual, and interpersonal and societal dimensions are analyzed by using literature review, participant observation and interviews for data collection. Targeted intervention programmes are developed via group work to carry out three types of empowerment services—tapping individual potential, improving interpersonal support networks, and optimizing the social environment. The findings indicate that empowerment-oriented group work effectively improves the recipients’ social skills. Accordingly, establishing an integrated empowerment system covering individuals, interpersonal relations and society serves as a viable approach to advancing community rehabilitation and facilitating their return to regular social life.

Key words: mental disorder recoverers, empowerment theory, community-based rehabilitation, social skill