An affective method is identified for increasing the sensitivity of paraprofessional psychiatric helpers to vocal (paralinguistic) expressions of the affect "sadness." Fifty-two male and female psychiatric hospital employees served as subjects and were divided into four groups, each of which was given identical pre- and post-testing. Group 2 received training on the vocal cues of sadness; Group 3 received vocal cue training and was exposed to slides of faces portraying various emotions; Group 4 was trained on facial as well as vocal cues of sadness; and Group 1 served as a control. Data analyses revealed that Groups 2 and 3 improved significantly more on the dependent measure of vocal sensitivity than Groups 1 and 4. In addition, both facial groups scored significantly higher than the control group and the vocal-training-only group on a generalization-of-training measure. Results suggest that Structured Learning Training can increase the sensitivity of paraprofessional helpers to vocal expressions of the affect "sadness," and indicate that including the facial mode during vocal training increases vocal sensitivity and generalization of training more than vocal training containing only the vocal mode. (Author/CKJ)