Paper presenters:
- Anna Berg Harpviken: Psychological Vulnerability and Attitudes Towards Violent Extremism in Norwegian Youth
- Rita Augestad Knudsen: Between vulnerability and risk? Mental health in UK counter-terrorism
- Lars Lyster: Critical life events: A pathway to extremism?
- Belinda Ekornås: The mental health dilemma: an explanation for or a result of violent extremism?
Abstracts
Psychological Vulnerability and Attitudes Towards Violent Extremism in Norwegian Youth
Anna Harpviken, University of Southern Denmark
Are psychologically vulnerable youth more susceptible to violent extremism than their average peers? Todays radicalized westerners are young, indicating the development of their extreme opinions during the vulnerable adolescent years. In this formative phase, psychological factors have been shown to play a significant role in the development of identity and opinions. The present study aims to investigate whether psychological vulnerabilities among youth increases their susceptibility to develop extremist attitudes. This is pursued through sub-questions addressing the impact of bullying, exposure to violence, and signs of mental disorders. Data comes from the project “Ung I Oslo 2015”, a populationbased, cross-sectional survey of adolescents conducted in all upper secondary schools in the Norwegian capital in 2015 (n = 10.932). Proxies for the independent variables will be created and used to explore the distinct effect on extremist attitudes of respectively bullying, exposure to violence, and signs of mental disorders. Furthermore, the interaction between the independent variables, as well as potential interactions with other factors presumed to affect extremist attitudes will be investigated. Results from these analyses will be presented and discussed in relation to previous research focusing on psychological factors and violent extremism. Implications for various types of interventions – including measures aimed to counter violent extremism – will be briefly discussed, as will priorities for future research.
Between vulnerability and risk? Mental health in UK counter-terrorism
Rita Augestad Knudsen, NUPI
The relationship between terrorism and mental health has been a concern of the terrorism scholarship for decades. So far, however, the literature has primarily concentrated on the relationship between terrorism and diagnosable disorders, as well as the possible prevalence of certain psychological traits among terrorist offenders. Meanwhile, the actual practice of incorporating (or not) perspectives regarding individuals’ mental health in the institutional and operational space of counter-terrorism has been largely ignored.
This paper will go beyond the much-researched questions of diagnoses, profiles, and risk indicators and give a brief overview of three current approaches to individual mental health in UK counter-terrorism. First, the paper it will explain the practice of using ‘appropriate adults’ in cases where individuals are arrested for terrorism (under code C of PACE); ‘appropriate adults’ are appointed in cases where the person arrested is deemed to be ‘vulnerable’, but not so vulnerable as to warrant a full mental health assessment. Second, the paper will explain the introduction of ‘mental health hubs’ at three locations in the UK in 2016: originally piloted to provide assistance to the police’s terrorism prevention work, the hubs have from 2017 increasingly been used on live cases. Third, the paper will describe the proliferation in psychologically based risk assessment tools in UK counter-terrorism and the assumed role played by mental health in these tools’ development and use.
The paper argues that all three practices show a blurring of the boundaries between what is considered vulnerabilities and what is considered risks in UK counter-terrorism’s approach to mental health. It asks whether the practices also suggest an increasing merger between the ‘Prevent’ and ‘Pursue’ strands of counter-terrorism in the UK, and what the implications of this might be for the future operational role of incorporating mental health considerations in counter-terrorism.