Promoting independence in adolescent paraplegics: a 2-week "camping" experience.

In the summer of 1982, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital (Dallas, TX, U.S.A.) sponsored a camp for paraplegic adolescents. Six patients, three boys and three girls 14-17 years of age, participated in a 2-week program that was designed to improve their self-esteem, independence, and eventual employability. In their pre- and postcamp psychological evaluations, the campers demonstrated improvement in social skills and self-concept testing as compared with the scores of a matched control group, although this improvement did not reach statistical significance. We believe the camp was immensely successful, an opinion that was shared by both the campers and their parents.