Wilderness Camping as a Therapy for Emotionally Disturbed Children: A Critical Review

Abstract

The wilderness camp has been described as a particularly good setting for treatment of the emotionally disturbed child. This article summarizes the current literature on therapeutic camping, including the nature of existing programs, rationales for the superiority of camping as a therapeutic program, and evaluation of existing programs. The results of program evaluation research reported in the literature provide only minimal support for any particular effectiveness ascribed to therapeutic camping in terms of either short term or long term therapeutic outcome. This is seen to be largely due to inadequate investigation of the process and/or the outcome of therapeutic camping.