Psychological Distress, Terrorist Involvement and Disengagement from Terrorism: A Sequence Analysis Approach
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Psychological Distress, Terrorist Involvement and Disengagement from Terrorism: A Sequence Analysis Approach Emily Corner1,2 · Paul Gill2
© The Author(s) 2019
Abstract Objectives This paper utilizes probability-based modelling to unpack the complex and multifaceted individual, sociological, and psychological processes present within terrorist groups which may affect an individual’s psychological wellbeing. We outline the predictors of the onset of psychological distress across three phases of terrorist involvement (engagement, disengagement, and post-disengagement). Methods Utilizing a dataset of over 90 terrorist autobiographies, we conduct sequence analyses to pinpoint the onset of psychological problems and the experiences that preceded and proceeded this onset. Results The results demonstrate the complexity in the relationship between mental disorders and terrorist engagement and the heterogeneity of the lived experience of ‘being’ a terrorist. The experience of psychological distress is mediated by numerous factors and the combination of these factors. Conclusions The results helped highlight the complexity of ‘being’ a terrorist; multiple factors at individual, social, and group levels impact on an individual as they pass through life. Individuals engaged within terrorism encounter a number of risk factors, which if an individual has lower baseline levels of individual resilience and is not fully committed to the group identity, may impact them psychologically. The results highlighted that it is not the presence of risk factors which impact on an individual, but how they perceive these risk factors. Keywords Terrorism · Psychopathology · Protective factors
* Emily Corner [email protected] Paul Gill [email protected] 1
Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
2
Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London, London WC1H 9EZ, England, UK
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Introduction Academic approaches to understanding the role, if any, of psychopathology in terrorist engagement greatly changed in the past few decades.1 This included positions positing psychopathy and particular personality traits in the 1970s and 1980s, to a large scale abandonment of such variables in the 1990s and early 2000s, and now to an emerging empirical literature which measures prevalence rates, disaggregates across different disorders, and compares prevalence rates across different types of terrorists and terrorist contexts (see Gill and Corner 2017 for a full review). Indeed, mental disorders and psychological vulnerabilities are now commonly incorporated into violent extremist risk assessment (Corner et al. 2019). However, a number of limitations remain with our current understanding of the relationship. First, nearly every study examining this relationship look at the impact of mental disorder upon terrorist engagement. With the exception of Weatherston and Moran (2003), nobody has looked at the o
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