Research shows mental health can both increase susceptibility to terrorist radicalization and decrease the risk of terrorism offences. At the same time, the most concerning offence characteristics of terrorism — potential violence and attack planning — are independent of mental health status. It neither increases nor decreases the risk assessments of individuals convicted of terrorism.
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Terrorism and Terror Management Theory
What if the 2002 movie Minority Report was real? What if we could identify someone about to commit a crime and stop them beforehand? Terrorism research tends to focus on the same thing. If we could figure out who the terrorists are or who they are likely to be, wouldn’t it be nice if we could stop them before they did it? Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to the questions of what causes terrorism and what causes somebody to become a suicide bomber. There isn’t one pathway to becoming a terrorist.
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This issue of the International Journal of Risk and Recovery presents three of four papers that delve into key issues on the categorization of terrorism, psychiatric assessment of individuals involved in terrorism, ethical issues in the assessment of those involved in terrorism, and preventive and rehabilitative approaches. The fourth paper was published in the previous issue. The themes are diverse though equally important, and the authors offer unique insights into the psycho-social, geopolitical, and ideological underpinnings of terrorism.
Read moreTerrorism Typologies and Considerations for Clinical Practice in Psychiatry
Typology development entails systematically clustering related attributes among individuals or groups to examine trends that might explain complex human interactions and behaviours. This approach has demonstrated its usefulness in behavioural sciences with important implications for policy, etiology, course, and treatment. Our review article provides an overview of terrorism typologies and examines their implications for clinical practice. We argue that the theoretical nature and heterogeneity of existing terrorism typologies limit their clinical usefulness, highlighting the need to develop empirically driven typologies.
Read morePsychiatric Assessment of Individuals Charged with Terrorism and Those at Risk of Engaging in Acts of Terrorism
Terrorism is a multi-faceted phenomenon that entails a strategic and instrumental use of violence to achieve ideological or political goals. Despite decades of research in the field, empirical data to guide clinical practice is lacking, and controversies surround the role of psychiatrists in assessing terror subjects. Our paper provides an overview of the social, psychological, and political-cultural risk factors for radicalization to terrorism; the assumed link between mental illness and terrorism; the relevant legal issues; and the threat assessment and management tools. In the absence evidence-based clinical guidelines, a thorough understanding of these issues helps inform psychiatric assessments of individuals charged with terrorism or those at risk of engaging in acts of terrorism.
Read moreEthical Issues in the Assessment of Terror Subjects
The psychiatric evaluation of people who have committed acts of terrorism requires a unique sensitivity to cultural and political context. This is because terrorism has multiple definitions and can be used to silence political and ethnic minorities. There- fore, professional appraisals of risk and threat may require an ethics approach that intertwines individual and community factors, considering history and culture along- side individual risks. Narrative ethics using root cause and liberation theories may be one method to assess both contextual and personal contributions to terrorist behaviour, and provide a robust account of the cultural and contextual realities of terrorism.
Read moreThe Psychiatric Aspects of Terrorism: Prevention and Rehabilitation
Preventing terrorism has thus far been in the domain of national security and law enforcement agencies. The expectation that psychiatry has a primary role to play in the rehabilitation of those involved in terrorism remains controversial, although the significance of certain mental disorders has been highlighted among lone-actor terrorists. This paper provides an overview of the motivating factors for radicalization to terrorism at both community and individual levels, as well as preventive and rehabilitative approaches to terrorism. We argue that psychiatry may have a role to play in these approaches with the goal of preventing violence in select cases.
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