{"id":381360,"date":"2026-04-08T12:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/381360\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T12:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:46:07","slug":"geckos-and-snakes-help-calm-nhs-mental-health-patients-in-kent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/381360\/","title":{"rendered":"Geckos and snakes help calm NHS mental health patients in Kent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Reptiles are being used to help patients improve their wellbeing at a mental health trust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Geckos, bearded dragons, tortoises and snakes are all part of a reptile\u2011assisted therapy programme running on wards at the Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust in Maidstone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In partnership with the National Centre for Reptile Welfare, the sessions have already supported 70 patients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Trust staff member Vikki Buxton-Helyer, who leads the sessions and volunteers at the reptile centre, said patients reported that &#8220;they find the animals really calming&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reptiles are being used to help patients improve their wellbeing at a mental health trust. Geckos, bearded dragons,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":["post-381360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}