“This is new and dynamic, and we are going to have to learn together”

The Metropolitan Police chief in charge of counterterrorism tells Richard Vize that the Prevent strategy is about safeguarding, not surveillance The shift in the terrorist threat from networks to lone attacks has put mental health and the protection of vulnerable people at the centre of the UK’s counterterrorism strategy. Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, the national lead on counterterrorism policing, tells The BMJ that the involvement of the NHS in Prevent—the part of the counterterrorism plan aimed at stopping people becoming terrorists—is “massively important, more important than it’s ever been.” He says, “We have wrestled with terrorism in the UK for at least 50 years, but for most of that time—whether it was the IRA or Al Qaeda—there were secret networks planning attacks, and the sort of people they recruited had to be highly trustworthy and reliable.” Now, terrorist groups try to incite people through propaganda on the internet and social media to carry out attacks: “Part of that has led them to—sometimes accidentally, sometimes very deliberately—trying to exploit vulnerable people.” Rowley claims that, of the people involved in the 13 attacks that the security services say they have foiled since 2013, “a disproportionate number of them do have mental health issues.” He would not specify a number. Rowley emphasises that any suggestion that mental …