Summer camp experiences for children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders: A meta-analysis

Summer camps have been the highlight of children’s and parents’ summer vacations for years. The American Camp Association (ACA; 2019) reports over 14,000 day and residential camps across the United States. These camps include recreational activities such as horseback riding, rock climbing, and boating, a chance to make friends and build community, and a chance to learn valuable new skills, such as how to build a fire or pitch a tent. Of these camps, the ACA reports that 44% have specialized programming targeted toward children and adolescents with specific diagnoses, illnesses, and disabilities. Specialized camps incorporate a combination of typical camp activities and therapeutic activities and are often believed to have a positive impact of their campers. Recent meta-analytic work documented the therapeutic value of camps for physical and chronic health conditions (Odar et al., 2013); however, a comparable review of specialized camps for individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities does not yet exist. Therefore, this thesis aims to evaluate summer camp related outcomes in children and adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013), through a meta-analysis following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009) and guided by the methodology of Odar et al. (2013)