Reaching out to the disaffected: mindfulness and art therapy for building resilience to violent extremism

ABSTRACT

Alienation and moral disengagement have been described in the literature as some of the key factors for making some people more vulnerable to violent extremism. In this paper, I explore how mindfulness training, especially when paired with art therapy strategies, has great potential for supporting targeted educational measures for building resilience to violent extremism in individuals and communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• violent extremism
• mindfulness
• art therapy
• education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.