Call for participants: RAN Cross-Cutting Event on ‘Prevention of violent extremism: a shared responsibility between mental health care and the security domain’

The role of mental health issues or mental illness in relation to radicalisation and violent extremism has gained more attention over the past few years. As discussed during the RAN Practitioners Mental Health Working Group meeting on ‘Enhancing the cooperation between mental health practitioners and security forces in P/CVE,’ practitioners noted a new phenomenon whereby a very high number of cases they encountered recently related to violent extremism seemed to suffer from some kind of mental health issue. Additionally, Europol signalled in their TE-SAT 2022 that violent incidents not labelled as terrorist but using terrorist modi operandi occurred in 2021: ‘While sometimes showing signs of religious radicalisation, the perpetrators of these incidents displayed other driving factors, in particular mental health issues.’ 

Moreover, the main conclusions from several RAN Policy Support activities on the topic are that: 

1. persons engaged in violent extremism who present severe psychiatric disorders are a specific sub-group inside the whole radicalisation population; 
2. nevertheless, they are difficult to manage, and such cases call for inter-agency collaboration, including the security sector; 
3. when information is shared across agencies, a fundamentally different picture of the radicalised individual emerges that can better inform interventions, and 
4. there is a need to systematically analyse existing MAW (multi-agency working) models involving mental health practitioners and security actors to identify transferrable mechanisms and replicable strategies.

To bring together the perspectives and knowledge of policy makers, practitioners, and researchers about common challenges and shared responsibilities of the mental health sector and the security domain in P/CVE work, the Radicalisation Awareness Network is organising a cross-cutting event on the ‘Prevention of violent extremism: a shared responsibility between mental health care and the security domain’ on 28 November in The Hague (NL).

Objectives of the meeting

Given the aforementioned issues, the aim of this cross-cutting event is to:

1. raise awareness among security actors of the impact of mental illness in pathways to radicalisation and (violent) extremism;
2. identify and discuss the challenges that hinder cooperation (e.g. legal/policy restrictions) between the security and mental health domain;
3. reach an agreement on the need for shared responsibility across the domains and the bridging of care and security cultures, and identify a way forward in this regard.

Call for participants

We are currently inviting practitioners, researchers, or policymakers from the mental health and/or security domain who encounter the issues mentioned above in their work and wish to discuss the abovementioned topics, to respond to this call.

If you are interested in participating in this meeting, please register through this link.

Deadline and practical information

Please fill in the form above before 15 November. We will invite participants based on the answers given in the survey. Please keep in mind that we can only invite a limited number of participants to this meeting to ensure valuable exchange and interaction, so participation is not guaranteed.

Travel and accommodation are arranged and covered by RAN, and the meeting will be held in English. 

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact RAN Staff members a [dot] vandermeijradaradvies [dot] nl (Anne van der Meij), elena [dot] dalsantoviolence-prevention-network [dot] de (Elena Dal Santo), s [dot] kuijperradaradvies [dot] nl (Sophie Kuijper) or f [dot] cantersradaradvies [dot] nl (Fenna Canters).