New vest offers wearer a portable hug

Everyone knows that a vest can be a life preserver. But can a vest also keep people from feeling adrift on land?

Yes, say researchers in the engineering department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who have designed a vest that gives the wearer a hug, offering a sense of security to people with autism or high anxiety.

Unlike some therapeutic vests on the market that use weights, the UMass vest uses air pressure, making it lighter and more adjustable.

Weighted blankets and vests have been used for several years, offshoots of the original ``hug machine" designed by Temple Grandin, who wrote the book, ``Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism."

Most suppliers of weighted vests provide only anecdotal evidence that they work. ``There hasn't been any scientific study on `why does it work, what makes it work, is it safe and effective,' " said professor Sundar Krishnamurty.

His research team is working to change all that. They will be testing their pressure vest on some 30 students and 30 psychiatric patients. Meanwhile, they're working to publish the results of their research on weighted blankets.

The vest is being developed as hospitals and treatment centers move away from the use of physical restraints.

``The use of restraint and seclusion is really a treatment failure," said Toby Fisher, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. ``We're open to any kind of treatment that works and that the public receives benefit from."

Tina Champagne, an occupational therapist on the research team, offers weighted blankets to patients on the psychiatric unit at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton so they can calm themselves, making physical restraint unnecessary.

``Some patients ask for them," said Champagne. She sees the advantage of the air-pressure vest as being wearable.

UMass students created the vest by cutting off the sleeves of a jacket and attaching an inner body of air bladders connected to an electric air pump. They're currently refining the design.

The UMass team has already conducted three studies of the effectiveness of weighted blankets.

Graduate student Brian Mullen, 24, of Dedham, decided to measure anxiety by subjecting volunteers at UMass to one of the most nerve-racking experiences he knows: driving through a tunnel in Boston traffic.

The volunteers battled traffic via the UMass driving simulator and afterward found the weighted blankets relaxing. In another study, 76 percent of patients at Cooley Dickinson Hospital responded favorably to a weighted blanket.

Testing of the vest is scheduled to begin later this month. Researchers will use two measures: a questionnaire to gauge whether the vest makes volunteers feel more relaxed and a skin reading used in lie detector tests to quantify the physiological response.

For researchers like Mullen, the experience has been an eye-opener. ``When I went into engineering, I thought I'd make the next Ferrari or a plane or something," he said. ``Then I found that there's this whole field of designing real cool stuff for people in need."