Paramedics should be summoned immediately when police are called to deal with overly agitated and aggressive people, says a Nova Scotia committee created following the death of Howard Hyde.

The recommendation is contained in a report by a panel of medical and mental-health experts. The provincial Justice Department released the document on Friday.

The committee says it should be up to responding officers to decide the best way to subdue someone who is extremely combative, paranoid or incoherent, but they should use the least restrictive way and call for medical help.

If "overwhelming force" is used, the committee adds, the subject should be immediately taken to hospital for observation or treatment.

The committee says it can't make any recommendations about the use of Tasers because there isn't enough research available.

The province commissioned the panel to look at the issue of excited delirium after the 2007 death of Hyde, a paranoid schizophrenic who died 30 hours after police shocked him with a Taser.

The medical examiner determined that the 45-year-old Dartmouth man died of excited delirium, a controversial term in psychiatric circles.

The panel recommends the use of the term autonomic hyperarousal state instead to describe a range of behaviours, from profuse sweating to combativeness to numbness to pain.

"We know that the state itself, the AHS increases the risk of death. We know that restraint increases the risk of death, holding somebody increases the risk of death," said Dr. Stan Kutcher, the chair of the committee.

"We know that using some other means like a Taser increases the risk of death, but we don't know what the proportional increase is. We don't know if the Taser is safer or not safer than holding somebody," said Kutcher.

The report also suggests that paramedics, police and dispatchers receive more training to identify people with signs of mental illness.

An inquiry into Hyde's death has heard that he had to be revived after police jolted him with the stun gun. He was taken to hospital, but he was never brought back to hospital despite the recommendation of a doctor.

Hyde died at that Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility the next morning after struggling with guards.

Dr. Blair Hunter, the brother-in-law of Howard, said the report makes one thing abundantly clear about Tasers, which are also known as conducted energy weapons.

Hunter said given the unanswered questions surrounding Tasers, "it would be very reasonable to suspend" their use until more is known about them.