SAO PAULO: A yellow-and-brown boa constrictor wraps itself around 15-year-old Brazilian David de Oliveira Gomes’s neck like a scarf, but the autistic teenager is fascinated, not afraid. For him, this was therapy.
His name is Gold. He is chilly. At a Sao Paulo treatment facility, Gomes tells his therapist that the enormous snake slithers about him and that “he eats mice.” That is the kind of response his therapist Andrea Ribeiro hopes to inspire.
She specialises in treating people with disabilities, anxiety, or autism, using a unique method called ‘reptile therapy,’ which helps patients relax and improve their motor skills, communication, and other abilities.
The 51-year-old language-speech therapist sits at a table with Gomes and the enormous snake. “He’s working on memory formation and speech,” the therapist says about Gomes.
At the therapeutic facility, where Ribeiro has been using this approach for the past ten years, patients can engage with turtles, lizards, and a “jacare,” a type of alligator endemic to Latin America that is widespread in Brazil, including in the Amazon rainforest. The treatment is not scientifically proven. —AFP/APP
