Call for participants: RAN Mental Health ‘Enhancing the cooperation between mental health practitioners and security forces in P/CVE’, 28-29 March 2023

The meeting will take place in The Hague, The Netherlands on 28 & 29 March 2023, lunch-to-lunch.

We are looking for suitable participants for the RAN Mental Health Working Group meeting on ‘Enhancing the cooperation between mental health practitioners and security forces in P/CVE’. This meeting will bring practitioners from the mental health and the police and security sectors together to discuss how to improve cooperation to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE). Focus will be on smart and practical interventions and tips that will enhance cooperation in daily practice.

Context

Over the last few years more and more attention is paid to the role of mental health issues or illnesses in radicalisation and violent extremism. The complex interplay of mental health and radicalisation processes brings a lot of challenges for practitioners working in P/CVE. Existing multi-agency collaborations across Europe are not fully attuned to this complexity. This creates challenges both in primary prevention settings (early detection multiagency settings) and in secondary and tertiary prevention (e.g. jailed returnees).

Mental health practitioners have a duty of confidentiality and aim to create trust-based relationship with the individual receiving treatment. At the same time, they also have to report possible threats the client might pose to society to local authorities or security officials. Providing them with a dilemma on what information they need to share from a security perspective and what information they are allowed to share possibly leading to not sharing relevant information with the security domain.  

In the security domain – on the other hand - there is not yet enough basic knowledge of (how to recognise) mental health issues and how mental illness symptoms relates to radicalisation processes. Hence, oftentimes first line professionals in the security domain overlook symptoms of mental health issues that might have led to a different choice of interventions.

To make sure the interplay between mental health issues, processes of radicalisation and security risks has been dealt with more efficiently, cooperation and exchange of information and knowledge in a practical way is needed.

The goal of this meeting is to jointly formulate why and when cooperation is crucial and exchange practical ways and means to ensure smart cooperation, information- and knowledge exchange. During this meeting we will also identify challenges and obstacles that cannot yet be solved to discuss during the cross cutting meeting in the last quarter of 2023 with researchers and policy makers

Call for participants

We are currently looking for experienced first line practitioners from the Mental Health & Police/Law enforcement sector who are dealing with radicalised individuals or the prevention of radicalisation in a multi-agency setting on an almost daily basis. In order to find the best suited participants and to tailor the meeting content to the practitioners’ needs, we would like you to fill out this survey before 23 February.

We will invite participants based on this information. Please keep in mind that we only have a limited number of places available for this meeting to foster exchanges, so participation is not guaranteed. We will contact you on this end of February/beginning of March.

If you know other suitable participants for whom this meeting is interesting, we encourage you to forward the call. 

Do you have any further questions? Please do not hesitate to contact f [dot] denizradaradvies [dot] nl (f[dot]deniz[at]radaradvies[dot]nl) and r [dot] heringaradaradvies [dot] nl (r[dot]heringa[at]radaradvies[dot]nl).

Please note this is a face-to-face event taking place in The Hague, The Netherlands and requires travel. Your travel will be arranged by RAN. By registering, you confirm your availability and willingness to travel for this meeting.