Impacted Whether They Know It or Not

In the past 20 years, schools have been increasingly exposed to school shootings in which many of the victims are targeted at random. Despite recent progress in coping with school crises such as suicide, accidental death, and targeted violence, the advent of random-type school shootings has left mental health, education, law enforcement, and other professionals struggling to deal with this type of traumatic event in terms of its aftermath and its prevention. In this chapter, a systems-oriented approach—rather than an individually-focused approach to traumatic events—the Traumatic Event Systems (TES) model, is proposed to increase the understanding and the effectiveness of professionals in responding to the aftermath of school shootings. The companion model, the Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA), is proposed with a trauma-informed threat assessment practice that creates a nexus between prior trauma and future violence potential through an understanding of the “trauma-violence continuum.”

The pathway to violence and public mass shooters in mental health treatment before attacks

Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide mental health practitioners with a framework for conceptualizing individuals who may be at risk of targeted violence, mass shootings in particular. Design/methodology/approach Through the lens of the Path to Intended Violence model, a non-experimental descriptive design was chosen to explore the characteristics and behaviors of perpetrators who had engaged in mental health treatment within six months before their attacks. Findings The perpetrators in this study demonstrated behaviors included in each of the stages of the Path to Intended Violence model. Thus, it may be important for practitioners to be familiar with this model, especially the earlier stages, to potentially identify and intervene with individuals who may be at risk of committing mass violence. Originality/value This paper highlights how the Path to Intended Violence model can provide practitioners with a framework for identifying progressive warning signs in patients and how to take action to stop them from continuing their journey toward violence.

Targeted Violence: A Review of the Literature on Radicalization and Mobilization

This literature review contributes to the work of understanding the differences between targeted violence and domestic terrorism by exploring research on radicalization and mobilization processes within the literature on targeted violence. This review relied on DHS’s 2019 language regarding the definition of targeted violence, and consequently focused on incidents that lacked an ideological motivation and occurred in “communities, schools, places of worship, and other public gatherings.” Though our data collection returned 169 distinct articles seemingly on the radicalization or mobilization of those involved in terrorism and targeted violence, we did not find a robust discussion of processes of radicalization or mobilization of those who commit acts of targeted violence. We did, however, identify five “theories of radicalization” in the targeted violence literature which we review in the article. We then articulate recommendations for research that would improve understanding of how domestic terrorism and targeted violence are related. This work is especially critical because the literatures on these topics are not, at present, in conversation with one another, and bringing them together has the potential to meaningfully advance the understanding of both phenomena.

A Whole-of-Society Approach to the Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Strengthening Local Protection Capacity in South and South-East Asia

In 2020, Rohingya men, women, and children continue to embark across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, and States continue to lack safe and predictable disembarkation protocols and standards. From a protection perspective, the situation in 2020 has played out as it did in 2015 showing a lack of progress. After decades of discriminatory policies, denial of basic human rights, and targeted violence, at least 1.5 million stateless Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State to seek refuge in the region and scattered locations around the globe, often surviving horrendous journeys by sea in the hope of disembarking with even marginally better prospects. The reception of the Rohingya in each of their places of refuge has been mixed, but it has rarely if ever been one of unqualified welcome. How do we engage with challenges that seem so intractable? The academic literature looking at refugee protection in the Asian region has largely dealt with its absence or inadequacy. Yet if we look more closely at any specific context in Asia, we can see that States may have laws, policies, or practices that can be utilised to recognise or respond to protection needs; international institutions like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) are often recognised and permitted to conduct protection activities; civil society actors in every jurisdiction have developed substantial capacity for operationalising protection in practice; and refugees themselves are coping and contributing to their own protection in every case. It is at the national and local levels where protection capacity must be built towards implementation of a ‘whole-of-society’ approach.

Displacement, Violence, and Mental Health: Evidence from Rohingya Adolescents in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

The Rohingya have endured generations of trauma through displacement and targeted violence in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands have been forced out of the country, with a large proportion settling in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. This study examines the impacts of exposure to trauma on mental health outcomes among Rohingya adolescents living in Bangladesh. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression are examined as outcomes. The main explanatory variable is a measure of exposure to trauma at two levels of proximity (experiencing and witnessing). Resilience is investigated as a potential effect modifier. Experiencing and witnessing traumatic events are positively and significantly associated with PTSD and depression. However, this effect is only seen for PTSD as a continuous measure, reflecting high rates of low-level PTSD in this population. Resilience is found to reduce the effects of trauma on depression, indicating an effect modification of this relationship.

Building the Airplane While Flying It: The Story of Ongoing Efforts to Establish and Evaluate a Multidisciplinary Team Response to VE in Massachusetts US

Research on mental health and violence among marginalized communities has identified the importance of engaging communities, diminishing stigma, addressing multiple outcomes including strengths, and building social connections. Within the United States, Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policies and programs have been criticized for failing in these areas. Recent efforts have sought to build multidisciplinary teams for the prevention of targeted violence and terrorism that explicitly seek to address these critiques and work to build the capacity of multidisciplinary providers to work with youth at risk for targeted violence and terrorism. Community Connect was a Boston, US-based community-based program that worked with youth at risk of violence, including ideologically-based violence. This program achieved broad community buy-in and successfully linked referred youth to a broad range of services in their communities. To bring the program to scale, an adaptation of Community Connect was developed that accepted referrals from a regional federally-convened threat assessment team, the Massachusetts Bay Threat Assessment Team (MassBayTAT). This multidisciplinary services team (MDST) maintains several essential functions from Community Connect, such as providing a thorough psychosocial assessment and maintaining regular contact and coordination between diverse providers, as well as making key changes to accommodate a regional scope. Given the nascent state of the field, both formative as well as summative evaluations play important roles in shaping and evaluating multidisciplinary violence prevention teams, as is evident in the iterative adaptation of the above-described multidisciplinary approaches. Evaluation of a multidisciplinary team for VE should assess both team development as well as case outcomes. Building trust within a community of diverse providers and disciplines and achieving a ‘whole of society’ approach to violence prevention is in and of itself an outcome that should be sought, as well as a reduction in violence at the individual level. Mixed-methods evaluations are needed to capture both the process and outcomes that are central to an effective multidisciplinary team for the prevention of terrorism and targeted violence.

The Importance of Bystanders in Threat Assessment and Management

Bystanders—those who observe or come to know about potential wrongdoing—are often the best source of preattack intelligence, including indicators of intent and “warning” behaviors. They are the reason that some planned attacks are foiled before they occur. Numerous studies of targeted violence (e.g., mass shootings and school shootings) have demonstrated that peers and bystanders often have knowledge of an attacker’s intentions, concerning communication, and troubling behavior before the attack occurs. This chapter describes—with empirical support—why threat assessment professionals should consider bystanders; outlines a model for understanding bystander decision-making; reviews common barriers to bystander reporting; and suggests ways to mitigate those barriers, to engage bystanders at an individual level, and to improve reporting. The principal aim of threat assessment is to prevent (primarily) intentional acts of harm. When tragic incidents of planned violence occur, however, it is almost always uncovered “that someone knew something” about the attack before it happened. This happens because, as attack plans unfold, people in several different roles may know, or come to know, something about what is happening before harm occurs. The perpetrators know, and so might others, including targets, family members, friends, coworkers, or even casual observers.

Warning Behaviors

The typology of eight proximal warning behaviors for targeted violence was first introduced a decade ago. Since that time, a number of studies have continued to support its interrater reliability and its criterion, discriminant, and predictive validity. Among the warning behaviors, the three most validated in discriminating between attackers and nonattackers are pathway, identification, and last resort. All of the other warning behaviors—fixation, novel aggression, energy burst, leakage, and directly communicated threat—are found at various frequencies throughout all the samples tested to date, including intimate partner homicide perpetrators, school shooters, adult mass murderers, public figure attackers, and lone actor terrorists.

Critical Concepts for Threat Assessment and Management With Adolescents

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by a series of remarkable transformations and transitions in social roles. In this chapter, some of the critical concepts for threat assessment and management raised when the person of concern is an adolescent are explored. First, the developmental changes in neurological, cognitive, and psychosocial maturity that occur during this period in the life span are discussed. Consequences arising from deviant peer influences are a concern for any threat situation, but the importance of peers among adolescents intensifies during this developmental period and can be explained in part by neurological changes. Second, the role of the adolescent’s internal world in assessing and managing concerns about targeted violence is examined, including violent ideation and fantasy and psychopathology. The final section presents a discussion of key concepts relevant to managing concerns about risk for targeted violence by adolescents that are consistent with developmentally appropriate and scientifically informed principles.