Preventing radicalisation and terrorism: is there a GP response?

Abstract

Radicalisation is a process by which an individual or group comes to adopt increasingly extreme political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo.1 Terrorism is seen as a consequence of such extreme ideals and is defined as, ‘any action … that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature and context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act.’ 2 Internationally, in the last year there has been an escalation in terrorist acts.3 Commentators have explored whether there is a psychological profile of a terrorist, with early commentators proposing mental illness, sociopathy, and psychopathy as risk factors for terrorist activity.4 However, emotionally unstable individuals tend not to be recruited by terrorist organisations as they are usually deemed too much of a security risk.5 However, there is a link between ill-health and terrorism; individuals living in war zones commonly experience post-traumatic stress disorder, ‘survivor’s guilt’, and bereavement of close friends or families. For some, such traumatic life-events are factors leading to committing terrorist acts.6 Symptoms of guilt, anxiety, grief, and a need for vengeance, combined with a strong religious belief of a better afterlife in which they will rejoin lost loved ones, explains some terrorist acts.7 However, while individual illness may be a contributory factor in an individual becoming radicalised, terrorist activity cannot be explained by a simplistic model of individual illness. Rather …