“Everyone loves a good scare on Halloween, but not when it comes to the safety of those little trick-or-treaters. Fortunately, there are lots of easy things parents and kids can do to stay safe on the spookiest of holidays.
On average, children are more than twice as likely to be hit by a car and killed on Halloween than on any other day of the year.”
Safe Kids Worldwide (https://www.safekids.org/halloween)
There may be fewer ghosts, witches, and superheroes wandering along the roads this Halloween looking for candy and treats because of COVID-19 concerns, but it’s important that drivers remain vigilant and keep an eye out for costumed children darting into the road, crossing parking lots, or strolling along the streets.
The scary reality is that Halloween has been one of the deadliest days of the year for pedestrians, especially children, statistics show. The risk of a pedestrian fatality was 43 percent higher on Halloween, based on a comprehensive study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association that analyzed 42 years of data.
“Halloween night is like a ‘perfect storm’ of risk because it involves darkness, a huge increase in pedestrian traffic—especially children—and all sorts of distractions,” says Jennifer Stockburger, director of operations at Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Center. “Everyone needs to be ultracareful to not turn such a fun evening into tragedy.”
About half of traffic deaths overall occur either in the dark or at dawn or dusk, says the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Driving at night is three times as risky as driving during the day,” says Matthew Brumbelow, a senior research engineer at the IIHS. The holiday should also serve as a reminder to motorists and pedestrians alike about the dangers.
The latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that 6,205 pedestrians died in traffic collisions in 2019.
Fortunately, there are clear steps that trick-or-treaters and drivers can take to improve safety for all. Below are tips from CR experts and NHTSA.
By being cautious and mindful of safety this Halloween, you can make sure the holiday is a treat for all.
“An ever-present conundrum of human nature is our lack of understanding of why we do what we do. Even more so, we scratch our heads in bewilderment in trying to figure out why others do what they do. Research has shown us that understanding human emotion is mandatory if we are to begin to unravel some of human nature’s mysteries. By nature, human beings are first and foremost emotional creatures. We are motivated and activated by emotions. Emotions are the drivers of our behaviours as they automatically tell us what is important or unimportant. Our value system is made up of a hierarchy of emotionally created sensations that rank what is important to us. There are some specific hormones that greatly affect human emotions.”
Psychreg.org
One pattern stood out pretty clearly: Lethal violence increased over the course of mammal evolution. While only about 0.3 percent of all mammals die in conflict with members of their own species, that rate is sixfold higher, or about 2 percent, for primates. Early humans likewise should have about a 2 percent rate—and that lines up with evidence of violence in Paleolithic human remains.
The medieval period was a particular killer, with human-on-human violence responsible for 12 percent of recorded deaths. But for the last century, we’ve been relatively peaceable, killing one another off at a rate of just 1.33 percent worldwide. And in the least violent parts of the world today, we enjoy homicide rates as low as 0.01 percent.
“Evolutionary history is not a total straitjacket on the human condition; humans have changed and will continue to change in surprising ways,” says study author José María Gómez of Spain’s Arid Zones Experimental Station. “No matter how violent or pacific we were in the origin, we can modulate the level of interpersonal violence by changing our social environment. We can build a more pacific society if we wish.”
What may be most surprising to some of us, though, isn’t how violent we are, but rather how we compare to our mammalian cousins.
It’s not easy to estimate how often animals kill each other in the wild, but Gómez and his team got a good overview of the species most and least likely to kill their own kind. The number of hyenas killed by other hyenas is around 8 percent. The yellow mongoose? Ten percent. And lemurs—cute, bug-eyed lemurs? As many as 17 percent of deaths in some lemur species result from lethal violence. (See “Prairie Dogs Are Serial Killers That Murder Their Competition.”)
Yet consider this: The study shows that 60 percent of mammal species are not known to kill one another at all, as far as anyone has seen. Very few bats (of more than 1,200 species) kill each other. And apparently pangolins and porcupines get along fine without offing members of their own species.
Whales are also generally thought not to kill their own kind. But dolphin biologist Richard Connor of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth notes that a dolphin infanticide attempt was documented recently, and he cautions that whales, as their close relations, might also be more violent than we’ve thought.
“We could witness a lethal fight in dolphins but not know it, because the victim swims away apparently unimpaired, but is bleeding to death internally,” he says.
More often, though, people think animals are more violent than they really are, says animal behavior expert Marc Bekoff, an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“Violence might be deep in the human lineage, but I think people should be very cautious in saying that when humans are violent, they’re behaving like nonhuman animals,” Bekoff says.
Bekoff has long contended that nonhumans are predominantly peaceful, and he points out that just as some roots of violence can be found in our animal past, so can roots of altruism and cooperation. He cites the work of the late anthropologist Robert Sussman, who found that even primates, some of the most aggressive mammals, spend less than one percent of their day fighting or otherwise competing.
After all, challenging another animal to a duel is risky, and for many animals the benefits don’t outweigh the risk of death. Highly social and territorial animals are the most likely to kill one another, the new study found. Many primates fit that killer profile, though as experts point out, not all of them. Bonobos have mostly peaceable, female-dominated social structures, while chimps are much more violent.
These differences among primates matter, says Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard known for his study of the evolution of human warfare. In chimpanzees and other primates that kill each other, infanticide is the most common form of killing. But humans are different—they frequently kill each other as adults.
“That ‘adult-killing club’ is very small,” he says. “It includes a few social and territorial carnivores such as wolves, lions, and spotted hyenas.”
While humans may be expected to have some level of lethal violence based on their family tree, it would be wrong to conclude that there’s nothing surprising about human violence, Wrangham says.
When it comes to murderous tendencies, he says, “humans really are exceptional.” It appears expected with the reason irrational more for the human than animals. Animals primarily do it for protection, food but some animals do it just to kill at times, like Bamboon’s. Know most animals don’t kill for that reason.
Sad about this whole article is humans are considered the most intelligent creature on Earth, yet we kill our own species!
“Anger is probably one of the mostly debated basic emotions, owing to difficulties in detecting its appearance during development, its functional and affective meaning (is it a positive or a negative emotion?), especially in human beings. Developmental studies have confirmed the psychophysiological, cognitive and social acquisition that hesitate in the pre-determined sequence appearance of anger and rage in the first 2 years of life. The so-called affective neurosciences have shown the phylogenetic origin of the two circuits underlying the emergence of anger along with its evolutionary role for promoting survival.At the same time, everyday life experiences as well as clinical insights into psychopathic, narcissistic and borderline personality pathology clearly illustrate the necessity to correctly interpret and give answers to the basic questions raised around the topic of anger as a basic emotion.”
National Library of Medicine NIH
Successful navigation of the social world requires the ability to recognize and track emotions as they unfold and change dynamically. Neuro-imaging and neurological studies of emotion recognition have primarily focused on the ability to identify the emotion shown in static photographs of facial expressions, showing correlations with the amygdala as well as temporal and frontal brain regions.
Our mood is a transient frame of mind that influences how we think and view the world. It is influenced by events in our lives, the amount of sleep we get, hormones, even the weather. But what role does the brain play in shaping our mood?
Many regions fundamental to mood are buried deep in the most primordial parts of the brain; that is, they are thought to have been among the first to develop in the human species. This is probably because mood is evolutionarily important.
Being glum can be advantageous and has been shown to sharpen our eye for detail, for instance. But, overall, the brain seems geared towards maintaining a mildly positive frame of mind. Being in a good mood makes us more likely to seek new experiences, be creative, plan ahead, procreate and adapt to changing conditions.
Our mood is a transient frame of mind that influences how we think and view the world. It is influenced by events in our lives, the amount of sleep we get, hormones, even the weather. But what role does the brain play in shaping our mood?
Many regions fundamental to mood are buried deep in the most primordial parts of the brain; that is, they are thought to have been among the first to develop in the human species. This is probably because mood is evolutionarily important.
Being glum can be advantageous and has been shown to sharpen our eye for detail, for instance. But, overall, the brain seems geared towards maintaining a mildly positive frame of mind. Being in a good mood makes us more likely to seek new experiences, be creative, plan ahead, procreate and adapt to changing conditions.
The limbic system is the major primordial brain network underpinning mood. It’s a network of regions that work together to process and make sense of the world.
Neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, are used as chemical messengers to send signals across the network. Brain regions receive these signals, which results in us recognising objects and situations, assigning them an emotional value to guide behaviour and making split-second risk/reward assessments.
The limbic system sits under the cerebrum (the largest and newest part of the brain) and is made up of structures such as the hypothalamus, hippocampus and the amygdala.
The almond-shaped amygdala attaches emotional significance to events and memories. It came to the attention of emotion researchers in 1939 when monkeys whose amygdalae were removed showed bizarre patterns of behaviour. They became fearless, hypersexual and either devoid of emotion or irrationally aggressive.
Dubbed Kluver-Bucy Syndrome, it is rare in humans, but has been observed in people with amygdala damage incurred, for instance, after a bout of brain inflammation.
The hippocampus, meanwhile, reminds us which courses of action are congruent with our mood. For instance, if you feel great you might like to walk down a path fringed with daffodils. If you feel crap, you may instead be drawn to that bar that spins melancholy albums by The Smiths.
The hippocampus has been shown to be shrunken in people with chronic depression. This may account for common features of the condition, such as vague or non-specific recall of personal memories.
The limbic system also regulates biological functions in line with our mood, such as accelerated heart rate and sweating triggered by feeling flustered. Being so old, however, the limbic system is rather primitive. In day-to-day life it’s controlled by some newer networks that co-ordinate how we think and act, so our behaviour is conducive to achieving longer-term goals, rather than always going wherever the mood takes us.
“Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.”
The United States Department of Justice
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which first began in 1981 by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence as a Day of Unity to connect battered women’s advocates across the country. Domestic violence affects millions, both women and men, of every race, religion, culture and status.
The term “domestic violence” includes felony or misdemeanor crimes of violence committed by a current or former spouse or intimate partner of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabitating with or has cohabitated with the victim as a spouse or intimate partner, by a person similarly situated to a spouse of the victim under the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction receiving grant monies, or by any other person against an adult or youth victim who is protected from that person’s acts under the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction.
Domestic violence can be physical or psychological, and it can affect anyone of any age, gender, race, or sexual orientation. It may include behaviors meant to scare, physically harm, or control a partner. While every relationship is different, domestic violence generally involves an unequal power dynamic in which one partner tries to assert control over the other in a variety of ways.
Insults, threats, emotional abuse and sexual coercion all constitute domestic violence. Some perpetrators may even use children, pets, or other family members as emotional leverage to get the victim to do what they want. Victims experience diminished self-worth, anxiety, depression, and a general sense of helplessness that can take time and often professional help to overcome. A clinician who works with victims of domestic violence may be able to help an individual extract her or himself from the situation, as well as offer psychological support.
In an emergency, victims of domestic violence should call 911 or contact state or local law enforcement officials, who can respond to these crimes.
Individuals in need of non-emergency assistance can also call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.
You can visit www.TheHoltine .org as well.
Break the cycle Don’t stay silent. It’s time to speak up all month long!
Nearly three out of four Americans personally know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence. Now is time to take a stand. Support survivors and speak out against domestic violence!!
“The goal of health education is to provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to lead healthy lifestyles. A skills-based approach is a best practice for delivering high-quality health education.
Health literacy is an important measure of the effectiveness of health education and is critical to ensuring that students have the ability to be healthy throughout their lives.
Health-literate people are able to address their own health needs along with the needs of others. They are able to obtain and apply knowledge and skills to enhance their own health and the health of others — both now and in the future as their needs change throughout their lives.
Society of Health and Physical Educators-SHAPE AMERICA (https://www.shapeamerica.org)
During the month of October, Health Literacy Month encourages everyone working to provide easy access to understandable health information. For more than 20 years, October has been recognized as Health Literacy Month. Health Literacy Month is a time of international observance when hospitals, health centers, literacy programs, libraries, social service agencies, businesses, professional associations, government agencies, consumer alliances, and many other groups work collaboratively to integrate and expand the mission of health literacy.
Low health literacy is more prevalent among:
What Are the Consequences of Low Health Literacy? – The two major areas that are impacted by low health literacy are “economic costs to society and the health-care system, and costs in terms of the human burden of disease” (Institute of Medicine, 2004). There is also considerable psychological suffering created by low health suffering. Within those overarching categories, the results of low health literacy (as measured by reading and numeracy skills) can include:
During this time, organizations and individuals promote the importance of understandable health information along with bringing awareness to breaking down the barriers of understanding. According to health experts, there is a large gap between the way health care issues are communicated by professionals, and the ability of the average person to understand them. Most people have limited health literacy… Not just those with limited reading or writing skills. If someone struggles to understand health literacy, statistically, they are more likely to skip important medical tests, have a harder time living with conditions, and visit the emergency room more often. This is why understanding health literacy is so important for everyone.
The good news is, that many health care facilities are trying to improve the way they communicate with patients to make sure everything is clear before the patient leaves. They are doing things like simplifying their written materials, using video and photos to teach patients, and more to help doctors clearly get their message across.
There are a few things you can do to improve your own health literacy individually or as a organization:
1. Improve your communication with health professionals. Make a list of your symptoms before you go in, have questions written down, and take a few notes when your doctor is explaining things to you.
2. Make sure you know who to call with any questions when you leave.
3. Attend health education programs at a library, community center, or anywhere you can find them in your community.
4. Talk to local schools and request that kids are taught about health literacy and education so they are prepared as they get older.
5. Hold a staff training to teach staff to use simple language, short sentences, and explain medical terms. Some useful tools for measuring individual.
6. Update materials for your organization to include similar resources in the primary language for Limited English Proficiency.