Peer Mentoring for Persons With Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)

A peer mentoring program for persons with SCI was developed. Individuals who experienced SCI
in the past and have adapted well functionally were asked to serve as mentors for
individuals with newly-acquired SCI. These individuals undergo volunteer and peer mentoring
training prior to mentoring activities. They are a subset of the study participants. We are
tracking their satisfaction with life, positive and negative affect, life adjustment,
depression, and social support over time. We hypothesize that measures of adjustment will
become more positive as involvement as a mentor increases. The second subset of study
participants are the individuals with newly-acquired SCI. They complete a baseline
assessment of the measures listed above and then at 6 months, one year, and two years after
match with a mentor. We also collect information about the quantity and quality of the
mentoring sessions from both the mentor and mentee. We hypothesize that the mentee's
adjustment will be positively influenced by the number and quality of the mentoring
sessions. Due to the relatively small number of SCI per year in our program, we opted to
offer the mentoring program to all individuals with newly acquired SCI, thus there is no
control group.