Lessons Learned from Mental Health and Education: Identifying Best Practices for Addressing Violent Extremism

Community-based practices within the fields of mental health and education range widely, and have been used to address varied levels and types of problems, needs and priorities. In the review of the literature, several themes emerged that are commonly drawn on in both mental health and education and also hold relevance to the challenge of addressing violent extremism. Specifically, these lessons are: 1) empower and engage communities, 2) use multi-level, multi-disciplinary approaches, 3) design programs based in strength and across the levels of the social ecology, and 4) build sustainable programs through rigorous design, evaluation and capacity building.