Preventing harm and facilitating care

What are our main findings?

• The main risks to elected politicians in western countries come not from terrorist or criminal groups, but from fixated loners.

• The majority of fixated loners are mentally ill.

• The risks posed by an individual depends upon their underlying motivation and symptomatology.

• Different sorts of risk are associated with different risk factors (and motivations).

• Those fixated on a personal cause or quest for justice are of particular concern.

• Other than violence (which is rare), risks which need to be assessed comprise:

1. Persistence: the risk that the intrusive behaviours will continue, unless there is some form of intervention.
2. Escalation: the risk that the behaviours will become more intrusive or dangerous.
3. Disruption: the risk that the behaviours will disrupt a person’s ability to go about their normal lives and duties, or disrupt public events.

• Attention to inappropriate communications and approaches to public figures is a way of identifying seriously ill people who have fallen through the care net.

• Treatment of the mental illness would both benefit the individual concerned and reduce any threat that they might constitute.