Crumbling mental health support leaves practitioners passing kids off to Prevent

A government report has raised concerns about people being referred to the ‘Prevent’ counter-terrorism program, not because of genuine concerns about radicalisation, but to speed up access to the UK’s crumbling mental health services.

However, given the biases and bigotries rife in both the program and mental health services themselves, this tactic is likely to be extremely risky for any Muslim, Black, and Brown people it affects.

‘Badly twisted approach’ ends up with Prevent

Whilst the government’s report was internal and never intended for public scrutiny, the Financial Times stated that it has seen the document. It was submitted in evidence for an inquiry into teenager Axel Rudakubana’s murder of three children in Southport in 2024.

However, the Financial Times doesn’t go far enough in its article.

We’ve known for a long time now about the use of health professionals to surveil patients for Prevent. We know Prevent has a massive bias against Muslim, Black, and Brown people. And, of course, we know mental health services themselves have a bias against Black and Brown individuals and Muslims.

As such, this referral tactic is likely to have severe consequences for many of the people it was ostensibly intended to help. As highlighted by Sarah St Vincent of campaign group Rights and Security International, health professionals are:

so desperate to get help for their patients that they’re referring them to a secretive policing programme that could impact them for the rest of their lives.

If that’s not a sign of a badly twisted approach in Westminster to people’s welfare, I don’t know what is.

Crumbling system

This desperation, if not the approach, is fully understandable. The waiting list for mental health services in England includes more than half a million young people. According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, over half of them have been waiting over a year. For over a third, the wait has lasted two years or more.

For childhood autism diagnoses alone, NHS data places the median waiting time as 19 months. However, guidance states that people who are referred to mental health services through Prevent should be seen within a week.

Psychologists working within counter-terrorism programs like Prevent have previously suggested that autistic people make up around 13% of their caseloads. For comparison, autistic people make up around 1% of the population.

The leaked Home Office report states that:

sometimes practitioners made referrals to Prevent to try to expedite mental health and neurodiversity support and diagnosis.

Similarly, it also claimed that evidence suggests:

that the limited capacity of mental health resources has a notable impact on Prevent thresholds. Separately, waiting lists for neurodivergence assessments reportedly impact the support available to them.

Racism within mental health support

However, once referred to Prevent – with its accompanying stigma – outcomes are likely to be far from positive for Muslim or Black and Brown people.

Prevent itself is well-known for disregarding the mental health needs of the individuals referred to it. Research from health work campaign group Medact highlighted the intertwined biases of Prevent and mental health ‘support’:

Racism is highly significant to both mental health and policing, especially ‘pre-crime’ areas such as Prevent, and the hubs stand at the intersection of these two fields.

A racialised Muslim is at least 23 times more likely to be referred to a mental health hub for ‘Islamism’ than a white British individual is for ‘Far Right extremism’

Likewise, with regard to combined policing/mental health ‘support hubs’, Medact highlighted the reciprocity between the two sectors:

A high proportion of patients referred to each hub were already in contact with NHS mental health services and many were actually referred into Prevent from the health sector, underlining the circularity and duplication the
hubs create

Even regardless of the Prevent element, racist treatment is rife within mental health and neurodiversity services themselves. For example, Black children face 3-year delays for autism diagnoses.

Black people are also  four times more likely to be restrained or sectioned by mental health services than their white counterparts, and are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The disconnect

A Home Office spokesperson told the Financial Times that there was no link between radicalisation and neurodivergence or mental health needs. They stated that:

We understand that people referred to Prevent may have a range of vulnerabilities, and we take our safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously. That is why we continue to strengthen Prevent’s approach to mental health and neurodiversity.

However, this somebody apparently forget to tell Prevent itself. 2025 Prevent Duty guidance from Ofsted states that:

Children and young people with Autism are at increased risk of being susceptible to extremism. This is because they are more likely to develop special interests. […C]hildren with autism are more likely to experience social isolation and so use the internet to find friends. They trust the information they read and the “friends” that they find online and so can be drawn into extremism.

Lasting consequences of Prevent referrals

The massive underfunding of mental health support by the UK government is making some health workers reliant on Prevent as a workaround for referral and diagnosis.

However, contact with Prevent can have a lasting impact and stigma attached to it – particularly for Muslims and Black and Brown individuals. Research, like Medact’s landmark study, has shown the level of reciprocity within mental health ‘care’ and Prevent – with both serving to create a web of surveillance.

Meanwhile, neurodivergence is being targeted by Prevent as a cause and indicator of radicalisation. Making Prevent referals in order to expedite diagnosis can only serve to entrench this view.

Whatever the intentions of the clinicians passing kids off to Prevent, their actions could have severe and lasting consequences for the vulnerable children they purport to protect.

Featured image via the Canary