At the recent White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, Vice President Joe Biden called for mobilizing “mental health resources” to stop people from becoming violent extremists. This followed President Obama’s call for solutions that lie in empowering communities. At the summit, I (SMW) heard many participants who are working with at-risk young people discuss the need for mental health care in countering violent extremism.
Lone-wolf terrorists, as well as mass shooters, have shown rates of mental illness that are higher than the general population (Law Hum. Behav. 2015;39:23-34). For the most part, however, it is widely agreed that involvement in terrorism cannot be explained by an individual’s mental health diagnosis. Nonetheless, emerging knowledge from our research and the field experiences of many others point toward psychosocial struggles as central to the process of adopting violent extremist attitudes and behaviors.
Stories abounded at the summit about young people struggling with poverty, trauma, identity, and/or family issues, and how that made them vulnerable to recruitment into violent extremist organizations.
How might mental health professionals offer an antidote to this adversity and disaffection?
One role for mental health professionals identified by summit participants is direct intervention with individuals believed to be at risk for violent extremism. Law enforcement and community members are now successfully identifying these individuals earlier, before they have committed a criminal offense. Some of these individuals are being offered mental health treatment to get them off the path to criminal actions.
This approach follows the United Kingdom’s Channel, which is a multiagency program aimed at providing support to persons at risk for being drawn into radicalization, with mental health professionals playing key roles in assessment and support.
Here in the United States, the Safe Spaces Initiative developed by the Muslim Public Affairs Council includes a critical inquiry team with a psychiatrist or psychologist who works with the team to assess and care for persons already showing signs of radicalization to violence. As interventions such as these are deployed to counter violent extremism, mental health professionals need to be involved not only in providing these services but in answering key questions: How do you define the focus of treatment? How do you measure success? What approaches are most successful and for whom?
Another role that summit participants identified for mental health professionals is in designing and implementing prevention strategies. Our research among Somali Americans in Minneapolis-St. Paul identified multilevel risk factors but also protective resources that could mitigate against those risks but need strengthening. Building resilience to radicalization and recruitment involves strengthening community, family, and individual protective resources. Efforts to build resilience can draw upon prevention science that has been used to address public health, mental health, and behavioral problems through building comprehensive models that address modifiable multilevel risk factors and protective resources.
Getting mental health, communities, and law enforcement to work together is an ambitious challenge. Some precedent has been set for innovative law enforcement/mental health collaborations in the United States, such as the Yale Child Study Center’s Child Development–Community Policing Program. However, bringing collaborative models to scale – and to bear on the urgent problem of violent radicalization – will require that we, as a nation, invest in developing, implementing, and evaluating new collaborative models.
Although there is much hope at the promise of the mental health professions bringing needed expertise to the problem of violent extremism, the prospect of integrating mental health into countering violent extremism (CVE) raises many questions. At what points in the path toward radicalization to violence is mental health intervention indicated and helpful? How should individuals in need of mental health treatment be identified? What types of mental health interventions would be most effective for preventing radicalization to violence? What obligations do mental health providers have to share information with law enforcement vs. maintaining confidentiality with their clients? What kinds of training and capacity building would be necessary for both mental health professionals and law enforcement practitioners to work together effectively?
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken steps to further develop the role of mental health in CVE. In January 2015, our team began to work toward answers to these questions through a new project funded by the Science and Technology Directorate of the DHS through the University of Maryland’s START Consortium. The aim of the project is to better understand how to integrate mental health professionals, along with education professionals, into CVE.
Through our work, we will conduct a systematic literature review on mental health, education, and CVE and convene a targeted workshop with CVE, law enforcement, mental health, and education professionals, including representatives from the three CVE “pilot cities” of Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Boston. The team will produce targeted cross-training modules for law enforcement, mental health, and education practitioners. These materials will be designed to be of practical use in the three pilot cities and will address the purpose of collaboration, promising program models, the degree of communication expected/possible, and potential conflicts of interest and associated steps for resolving them.
Vice President Biden was right. Incorporating mental health into CVE holds significant potential in enhancing prevention and intervention capacities. To do so effectively, however, requires a better understanding of how, when, and to what purpose assets and contingencies from mental health can be brought to bear on the challenges of countering violent extremism.
Dr. Weine is professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Ellis is assistant professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School.
