Friday 05 December 2025, 12-12.30pm
Experiences and challenges from the UK’s Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service.
Dr Richard Taylor
Counter-terrorism, including prevention, has long struggled with how to approach individuals with mental health concerns. In the UK and elsewhere, the number of people with apparently ill mental health within counter terrorism casework has increased over the past few years. Sometimes, multiagency cooperation can be made difficult by a lack of understanding of diagnoses and symptomology among police and law enforcement – and lack of knowledge of terrorism-related risk among health workers. Issues around classification and secrecy, as well as medical confidentiality and privacy are important concerns sometimes further complicating information sharing and cooperation.
In the UK, the Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service (CT CCS) was established to address these challenges. The CCS aims to aid information sharing between health professionals and police, to assist in better assessing risk and identify appropriate interventions.
Dr Richard Taylor is a forensic psychiatrist who has worked in secure hospitals and prisons since the early 1990s. Since 2002 he has assessed a range of terrorist detainees including both group and lone actors. From 2017 he worked in the pilot counter terrorism mental health liaison service, the Vulnerability Support Hub (VSH). In 2024 he became National Clinical Lead for the CCS. He will outline his experiences with running the CCS. He will discuss topics such multiagency cooperation and information sharing, and individual factors contributing to risk management of those vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism and convicted terrorists with mental disorders.
UKPTS Bites is a series of short, online seminars on leading topics from the world of traumatic stress and beyond. For more information: www.ukpts.org/bites
