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I enjoyed reading about topics that aren't common and normally brought up. I also learned that these topics are things that we should start talking about because we should be fixing them, not avoiding them. Lastly, I thought about how I could start researching more on these topics and bringing them up.

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After learning about gun use and how people use guns for "self defense", I decided to read about cops and other first responders and see how they are being treated. I read about a company and a school group coming together to make things to help reduce hemorrhages in veterans and other first responders and to help cure them. The article provides specific ways on how this team plans on helping the world and fixing this issue.

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Newswise - ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A partnership between critical care researchers and veterans is bringing medical devices inspired by the battlefield to first responders and civilian life.

"The Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care's relationship with the veteran-operated company, Precision Trauma, provides a direct connection to emerging innovative trauma and combat casualty care products," says Kevin Ward, M.D., a professor of emergency medicine and executive director of MCIRCC.

The two teams are partnering together to find new ways to change and simplify the current approach to hemorrhages well before surgical care can be provided.

Their first product is a simple-to-use tourniquet built specifically for first responders and civilians. While a tourniquet is a commonly found device, their new design offers significant mechanical advantages that make it easier, faster and more effective in stopping a life-threatening hemorrhage from a bleeding limb. Designed by teams of clinicians and engineers at MCIRCC, the tourniquet is expected to reach the market by spring 2021 after undergoing refinement by the Precision Trauma team.

"Junctional and non-compressible torso (abdominal and pelvic) hemorrhage continue to be the greatest sources of potentially survivable death," says Ethan Miles, M.D., a veteran and one of three founders of Precision Trauma. "With MCIRCC's innovative hemorrhage control product line, our unique solutions enable the non-surgeon to achieve hemorrhage control and allow the patient to reach definitive care alive. Current solutions in the health care system require advanced training and dedicated teams to implement, and for the most part are not practical in the prehospital environment."

Establishing a relationship

The partnership between MCIRCC and Precision Trauma first began when Ward was presenting at an international trauma research conference on the training of special operations medics at the University of Michigan to prepare them to provide combat casualty care. He met Miles, who was currently serving as the 75th Ranger Regimental surgeon.

"It was my sixth year as a special operations physician, so I had already been receiving the benefits of Dr. Ward's quality training programs through my combat medics," Miles says.

After a brief introduction, it was clear the two had a lot in common.

Not long after, Ward teamed up with Miles to help the regiment develop a whole blood resuscitation program for the point of injury, or a blood transfusion that uses all the components of blood, not just one type of cells. "This program was the first of its kind and a true team effort," Miles says. "He was instrumental in its success."

Though Miles and Ward stayed in touch, it was years later that their partnership would reach new ground. In 2019, Ward invited the Army physician to visit the MCIRCC team at Michigan Medicine and observe their work.

"I knew that Ethan and his colleagues were natural problem solvers who would demolish barriers to get things done," says Ward, who is also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corp and part of an Army Forward Resuscitative Surgical Team charged with taking care of battlefield casualties in far forward areas. "Matching the right problem with total commitment to the mission would allow us to crush the problem."

It didn't take long for Miles to get excited about the opportunities available at MCIRCC.

"After meeting the team, touring the facility and a detailed discussion about the innovative research stream and products, I quickly called up two colleagues and friends, both of whom served with me in the 75th Ranger Regiment," Miles says. "We decided to form Precision Trauma and partner with MCIRCC to bring several exciting products to the market."

Much like the military service that preceded them, the team at Precision Trauma has the goal to help save lives at record rates. Miles, Jeffery Cain, M.D., a current practicing emergency physician and former ranger infantry officer and physician, and Peter Shull, a prior member of the Regiment, are focused on bringing practical life-saving devices to the right patient, at the right place, at the right time.

"Mission success in the military relies on innovation, preparation, teamwork and execution, which are all critical to the goals of Precision Trauma," Miles says. "The three of us have all seen a significant amount of trauma, adversity and mission success, and we genuinely believe our approach will change how trauma care is delivered by providing innovative solutions that will result in saving more lives."

Future goals

While Precision Trauma's product line is currently small, it was the company's bold mission that really stood out to the MCIRCC team when deciding to partner: "With the mission of saving the next patient at the forefront, we are now bringing this same innovation to the very communities we sought to protect over the last two decades."

After working with the U-M Office of Technology Transfer, Precision Trauma has acquired both a license to certain intellectual property and a formal option to license other intellectual property, as specified in the agreement.

MCIRCC's preclinical and clinical research cores are also working on additional solutions to control hemorrhage and more complex and catastrophic injuries experienced by both civilians and military personnel.

Both Ward and Miles view the relationship between MCIRCC and Precision Trauma as a long-term partnership, and have plans for the development of more products.

"We view this strategic partnership with Precision Trauma as a force multiplier to MCIRCC's mission of transforming critical care through innovation, integration and entrepreneurship," Ward says.
Dr. Ward is an inventor of licensed IP to and he has equity in, Precision Trauma, LLC.

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michigan medicine - university of michigan

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Partnership with Veterans Brings New Medical Devices to Prehospital Settings

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Newswise - ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A partnership between critical care researchers and veterans is bringing medical devices inspired by the battlefield to first responders and civilian life. "The Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care's relationship with the veteran-operated company, Precision Trauma, provides a direct connection to emerging innovative trauma and combat casualty care products," says Kevin Ward, M.D., a professor of emergency medicine and executive director of MCIRCC.

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After learning about the horrible experience the innocent man's family had to go through, I wanted to know more about how often guns are used in self defense and not for a valuable reason. In this article, I learned that majority of deaths that are due to gun use, are because the shooter sues them for self defense. Although there are times that you really may be in danger, self defense is not a very good excuse to use because people can say they felt harmed in any situation, and it isn't a valid reason.

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The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

It's a common refrain touted by gun rights advocates, who argue that using guns in self-defense can help save lives. But what is the actual number of defensive gun uses?

According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of gun owners say they own a gun mainly for protection. But for years, experts have been divided over how often people actually use guns in self-defense. The numbers range from the millions to hundreds of thousands, depending on whom you ask.

The latest data show that people use guns for self-defense only rarely. According to a Harvard University analysis of figures from the National Crime Victimization Survey, people defended themselves with a gun in nearly 0.9 percent of crimes from 2007 to 2011.

David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning a gun outweigh the benefits of having one in the rare case where you might need to defend yourself.

"The average person ... has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense," he tells Here & Now's Robin Young. "But ... every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared."

But the research spread by the gun lobby paints a drastically different picture of self-defense gun uses. One of the most commonly cited estimates of defensive gun uses, published in 1995 by criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, concluded there are between 2.2 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.

One of the main criticisms of this estimate is that researchers can't seem to find the people who are shot by civilians defending themselves because they don't show up in hospital records.

"The Kleck-Gertz survey suggests that the number of DGU respondents who reported shooting their assailant was over 200,000, over twice the number of those killed or treated [for gunshots] in emergency departments," crime prevention researcher Philip Cook wrote in the book Envisioning Criminology.

Kleck says there is no record of these gunshot victims because most instances of self-defense gun use are not reported.

"If you tell the police, I just wielded a gun pointing a deadly weapon at another human being and claimed it was in self-defense, the police are going to investigate that," he tells Young, "and they may well in the short run arrest you and treat you as a criminal until and unless you are cleared."

On the flipside, Kleck says, criminals who were wounded after a gun was used in self-defense also have no incentive to go to the emergency room because medical professionals have an obligation to report it to the police. But Hemenway points out that if people don't go to the hospital to treat the original gunshot wound, they will inevitably end up there "with sepsis or other major problems."

He also notes that part of the reason experts are so divided on the number is the difficulty in obtaining reliable survey data on the issue.

"The researchers who look at [Kleck's study] say this is just bad science," Hemenway says. "It's a well-known problem in epidemiology that if something's a rare event, and you just try to ask how many people have done this, you will get incredible overestimates."

In fact, Cook told The Washington Post that the percentage of people who told Kleck they used a gun in self-defense is similar to the percentage of Americans who said they were abducted by aliens. The Post notes that "a more reasonable estimate" of self-defense gun uses equals about 100,000 annually, according to the NCVS data.

Another problem is that there is no consensus on the definition of defensive gun use. Some incidents could involve illegal carrying or possession, or they could amount to aggravated assault, the Rand Corp. writes:

Perceptions about the incident and an individual's role are important because much of the literature relies on self-reports: The respondent must have perceived there to have been a crime (or, in some surveys, a suspected or averted crime) and must consider himself or herself a victim rather than a mutual combatant. Even such stringent definitions, however, may not be sufficient to determine whether the event was lawful, legitimate, or desirable from a social perspective.

Even if someone wanted to use a gun in self-defense, they probably wouldn't be very successful, says Mike Weisser, firearms instructor and author of the blog "Mike The Gun Guy." He says many people who carry a gun aren't properly trained to use it in this way, and there is no performance validation standard for police officers.

"If we don't even have a minimum standard, not for training, but for performance validation for our law enforcement," he says, "how in God's name is anybody going to say, 'Well, just because you have a gun in your pocket, you know how to use it in self-defense?' You don't."

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How Often Do People Use Guns In Self-Defense?

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The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. It's a common refrain touted by gun rights advocates, who argue that using guns in self-defense can help save lives. But what is the actual number of defensive gun uses?

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After reading about animals and how they affect your mental health,i was curious to read more about mental health. I found an article on how during a mental crisis, 911 was called,and changed the family's life forever. In the article, it talks about how a male with paranoid schizophrenia was killed because the cop felt threatened with the male walking closer to him with a hunting knife in hand. The article provides detailed information on how everything went down,and it was scary to read that this innocent male got killed because he was seen as a threat, but he was just paranoid and wanted to protect himself.

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Rulennis Muñoz remembers the phone ringing on Sept. 13. Her mother was calling from the car, frustrated. Rulennis could also hear her brother Ricardo shouting in the background. Her mom told her that Ricardo, who was 27, wouldn't take his medication. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia five years earlier.

Ricardo lived with his mother in Lancaster, Pa., but earlier that day he had been over at Rulennis' house across town. Rulennis remembers that her brother had been having what she calls "an episode" that morning. Ricardo had become agitated because his phone charger was missing. When she found it for him, he insisted it wasn't the same one.

Rulennis knew that her brother was in crisis and that he needed psychiatric care. But she also knew from experience that there were few emergency resources available for Ricardo unless a judge deemed him a threat to himself or others.

After talking with her mom, Rulennis called a county crisis intervention line to see if Ricardo could be committed for inpatient care. It was Sunday afternoon. The crisis worker told her to call the police to see if the officers could petition a judge to force Ricardo to go to the hospital for psychiatric treatment, in what's called an involuntary commitment. Reluctant to call 911, and wanting more information, Rulennis dialed the non-emergency police number.

Meanwhile, her mother, Miguelina Peña, was back in her own neighborhood. Her other daughter, Deborah, lived only a few doors down. Peña started telling Deborah what was going on. Ricardo was becoming aggressive; he had punched the inside of the car. Back on their block, he was still yelling and upset, and couldn't be calmed. Deborah called 911 to get help for Ricardo. She didn't know that her sister was trying the non-emergency line.
The problems and perils of calling 911 for help with mental health
A recording and transcript of the 911 call show that the dispatcher gave Deborah three options: police, fire or ambulance. Deborah wasn't sure, so she said "police." Then she went on to explain that Ricardo was being aggressive, had a mental illness and needed to go to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Ricardo had moved on, walking up the street to where he and his mother lived. When the dispatcher questioned Deborah further, she also mentioned that Ricardo was trying "to break into" his mom's house. She didn't mention that Ricardo also lived in that house. She did mention that her mother "was afraid" to go back home with him.

The Muñoz family has since emphasized that Ricardo was never a threat to them. However, by the time police got the message, they believed they were responding to a "domestic disturbance."

"Within minutes of ... that phone call, he was dead," Rulennis says.

Ricardo's mom, Miguelina Peña, recalls what she saw that day. A Lancaster police officer walked toward the house. Ricardo saw the officer approach through the living room window, and he ran upstairs to his bedroom. When he came back down, he had a hunting knife in his hand.

In video from a police body camera, an unidentified officer walks toward the Muñoz residence. Ricardo steps outside, and shouts "Get the f-k back." Ricardo comes down the stairs of the stoop and runs toward the officer. The officer starts running down the sidewalk, but after a few steps, he turns back toward Ricardo, gun in hand, and shoots him several times. Within minutes, Ricardo is dead.

After Ricardo crumples to the sidewalk, his mother's screams can be heard, off camera. Police made the body camera video public a few hours after Ricardo's death, in an effort to dispel rumors about Ricardo's death and quell rioting in the city. The county district attorney has since deemed the shooting justified, and the officer's name was never made public.
Fatal police shootings often involve a mental health crisis
It was a tragedy for the Muñoz family - but it's not that unusual. According to a Washington Post tracker, police killed about a thousand people in the U.S. in the past 12 months. Like Ricardo, a quarter of those people had a diagnosis of a serious mental illness.

Across the U.S., people with mental illnesses are 16 times more likely than the overall population to be killed by police, according to one study from the mental health nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center.

Ricardo's mother, Miguelina Peña, says she tried for years to get help for her son.

Among the problems, the family couldn't find a psychiatrist who was taking new patients, Peña says. Additionally, Peña speaks little English, and that made it difficult to help Ricardo enroll in health insurance, or for her to understand what treatments he was receiving. Ricardo got his prescriptions through a local nonprofit clinic for Latino men, Nuestra Clinica.

Instead of consistent medical care and a trusted therapeutic relationship, Ricardo got treatment that was sporadic and fueled by crisis: He often ended up in the hospital for a few days, then would be discharged back home with little or no follow-up. This happened more times than his mother and sisters can recall.

"There was an occasion where a judge was involved, and the judge determined that he should be released home," Peña says. "And my question is why would the judge allow him to go home if he wasn't doing well?"
When a patient refuses treatment, crisis care often falls to law enforcement
Laws in Pennsylvania and many other states make it difficult for a family to get psychiatric care for someone who doesn't want it; it can only be imposed on the person if he or she poses an immediate threat, says Angela Kimball, advocacy and public policy director at National Alliance on Mental illness. By that point, it's often law enforcement, rather than mental health professionals, who are called in to help.

"Law enforcement comes in and exerts a threatening posture," Kimball says. "For most people, that causes them to be subdued. But if you're experiencing a mental illness, that only escalates the situation."

People who have a family member with mental illness should learn what local resources are available and plan for a crisis, Kimball advises. But she acknowledges that many of the services she frequently recommends, such as crisis hotlines or special response teams for mental health, aren't available in most parts of the country.

If 911 is the only option, calling it can be a difficult decision, Kimball says.

"Dialing 911 will accelerate a response by emergency personnel, most often police," she says. "This option should be used for extreme crisis situations that require immediate intervention. These first responders may or may not be appropriately trained and experienced in de-escalating psychiatric emergencies."

The National Alliance on Mental Illness continues to advocate for more resources for families dealing with a mental health crisis. The group says more cities should create crisis response teams that can respond at all hours, without involving armed police officers in most situations.

There has been progress on the federal level, as well. Kimball was happy when President Trump signed a bipartisan Congressional bill, on Oct. 17, to implement a three-digit national suicide prevention hotline. The number - 988 - will eventually summon help when dialed anywhere in the country. But it could take a few years before the system is up and running.

Rulennis Muñoz says the family never got to see how Ricardo would have responded to someone other than a police officer.

"And instead of a cop just being there, there should have been other responders," Rulennis says. "There should have been someone that knew how to deal with this type of situation."

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During A Mental Health Crisis, A Family's Call To 911 Turns Tragic

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Rulennis Muñoz remembers the phone ringing on Sept. 13. Her mother was calling from the car, frustrated. Rulennis could also hear her brother Ricardo shouting in the background. Her mom told her that Ricardo, who was 27, wouldn't take his medication. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia five years earlier.

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I chose my first article because a lot of people got pets during the pandemic and I was curious to see if they improved mental health. The article was about how most people considered their pets as sources of emotional support. The article provided a statistic that owners of dogs,cats,horses etc. have a higher bond score than owners of fish, birds, small mammals, and reptiles.

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In response to the social isolation associated with COVID-19, lots of people are taking the advice of those like fellow Psychology Today blogger Catherine Sanderson, who described " 5 Great Reasons to Adopt a Dog During The Pandemic." Animal shelters all over the United States have experienced a run on adoptions of dogs and cats. In April, for example, Chicago's Animal Care and Control shelter completely ran out of adoptable animals for the first time.

But is there solid evidence that getting a pet will actually cure the COVID blues? Months ago researchers who study human-animal interactions began posting online questionnaires to answer this question. In June, a group of researchers reported that 70% of the 4,000 dog owners they surveyed agreed their pets helped them cope with loneliness and depression caused by the pandemic. The participants also reported increases in positive emotions such as giving purpose and meaning to one's life.

A new study from the UK sheds light on the impact of pets on their owners' mental health during lockdowns, and some of the results are unexpected.
Are Pet Owners Better Off in the Age of COVID?
The researchers were led by Dr. Elana Ratschen at the University of York. The team surveyed nearly 6,000 adults in the United Kingdom, 90% of whom owned pets. (You can read the full text of their study here.) The study began on April 16, 2020, a month after the government instituted strict social distancing and isolation, and it ended on May 31 when the lockdown was officially eased. In addition to demographic questions, the survey included standardized scales to measure loneliness, general mental health, and the strength of the bonds between pet owners and their companion animals. For the mental health scales, the subjects were asked to indicate their self-perceptions both "before lockdown" and when they were actually taking the scale, which was at least a month into the strict lockdown.

Here are the questions they addressed and their answers.
Question: What were the perceived roles of pets during the lockdown and what concerns did they have related to pet ownership?
Answer: The vast majority of pet owners considered their pets important sources of emotional support. For example, 87% said their pets helped them cope with the Covid situation. Ninety-five percent agreed with the statement "I cannot imagine being without my animal at this time."

There were, however, concerns that came with owning pets during the lockdown. These included problems with access to veterinary care, not knowing who would take care of their pet if the owner became ill, not being able to meet their pets' exercise needs, and problems getting pet food. However, only 5% agreed that "It would be easier for me not to have an animal at this time.
Question: Does the strength of the human-animal bond differ by the species of their pets?
Answer: The researchers initially found species differences in how attached people were to their pets. Owners of dogs and horses, for example, had higher bond scores than people who lived with birds, fish, small mammals, and reptiles. But, surprisingly, these differences disappeared once the roles the animals played in the participants' lives were statistically taken into account.
Question: How is mental health and well-being associated with the strength of the human-animal bond in pet owners?
Answer: Several studies have found that being very attached to pets is associated with MORE mental health issues. Dr. Ratschen and her team also found this was the case. In their study, the pre-lockdown mental health scores of highly attached pet owners were significantly lower than the scores of owners who were less bonded to their pets.
Question: Does owning a pet buffer the impact of lockdowns on loneliness and mental health?
Answer: This is the most important issue addressed by the researchers. As expected, the mental health scores of both pet owners and non-owners went down during the lockdown and loneliness scores of both groups went up. The good news is that when factors like gender, age, and living with someone else were taken into consideration, the scores of pet owners did not go down as much as the scores of the non-pet owners.

The bad news is the average loneliness and mental health scores of pet owners' mental health before and during the lockdown were not much different. Indeed, the researchers are admirably honest in describing this result. They write, "The difference in changes between animal owners and non-owners was very small....most probably not of clinical significance."

Surprisingly, the strength of the bond between owners and their pets did not seem to have any effect on the degree companion animals ameliorated the impact of pandemic-related isolation on mental health.

The bottom line, and a caution

I was encouraged by the results of this study. As I have written in previous posts, contrary to the claims of the pet products industry marketing departments, most studies have found there are no differences in the loneliness or mental health of pet owners and non-owners. (See Can Pets Really Relieve Loneliness? and The Truth About Pets and Depression.) However, things may be different now. It's possible that getting a pet does help us cope with the social isolation so many of us are facing during the pandemic.

But before you go out and adopt a dog (or a gerbil or snake) because it will help you cope with COVID-induced isolation, keep a couple of things in mind. As the researchers reported, there were downsides to pet ownership. Owners worried about veterinary care, the fate of their pets if they were to get sick themselves, and concerns about their pet suffering when owners returned to work.

And remember - the researchers found the impact of pets on mental health was surprisingly small. As Dr. Ratschen told Science Daily, "It is important to understand that this finding...does not warrant any suggestion that people should acquire pets to protect their mental health during the pandemic."

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Do Pets Improve Mental Health During COVID Lockdowns?

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In response to the social isolation associated with COVID-19, lots of people are taking the advice of those like fellow Psychology Today blogger Catherine Sanderson, who described " 5 Great Reasons to Adopt a Dog During The Pandemic." Animal shelters all over the United States have experienced a run on adoptions of dogs and cats.