{"id":398925,"date":"2026-04-26T20:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T20:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/398925\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T20:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T20:39:08","slug":"pretend-play-is-a-magical-part-of-childhood-new-research-suggests-it-can-also-help-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/398925\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretend play is a magical part of childhood. New research suggests it can also help mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/fotini-vasilopoulos-2636008\" class=\"visited:text-foreground-secondary visited:decoration-stroke-link underline-brand-hover hover:visited:text-foreground-primary\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fotini Vasilopoulos<\/a> is a Postdoctoral Researcher, Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney. Lucinda Grummitt, Sasha Bailey, Louise Birrell, Iroise Dumontheil, Gill Francis, Eliza Oliver, Olivia Karaolis, Robyn Ewing, Michael Anderson, Maree Teesson and Emma L. Barrett were also authors of the research study discussed in this piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fotini Vasilopoulos is a Postdoctoral Researcher, Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-398925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398925","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=398925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}