Terror for Profit: Terrorism and Mental health

mental health

Lone Wolf Terrorists and Mental Health

In Chapter 6, I tackle the thorny issue of the ever-increasing number of lone wolf terrorists and their fragile mental health. Sean Lintern recently wrote in The Sunday Times that in the UK:

"At the start of the year, a record 682,000 patients were taking medication to treat psychosis and related disorders such as schizophrenia. In the same period in 2015, there were 570,000.”

Lintern highlighted that it is common for patients who would previously have been in an institution to be left in the community and that in the last 4 years, at least 233 people have been killed in the UK by individuals suffering from a mental disorder.

It should come as no surprise that with an increasing population of individuals suffering from mental illness at large in our communities, many of these individuals are fixating on a cause. The internet has provided a means to seek out and join like-minded actors holding, in some cases, bizarre and dangerous world views.

In this chapter, I examine cases in detail that provide insight into this collision between the mentally ill and terrorist causes, making it clear that we must look at individuals rather than ideologies to understand terrorism in the 21st century.