{"id":369517,"date":"2026-04-08T12:47:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/369517\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T12:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:47:07","slug":"geckos-and-snakes-help-calm-nhs-mental-health-patients-in-kent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/369517\/","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":369518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-369517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}