Nihilistic violence has recently become a source of concern for both security agencies, schools and youth mental health clinicians. Since the COVID pandemic, adhesion to NV is more frequent in vulnerable adolescent referred for a high risk of violence toward others than in their adult counterpart (Rousseau and al, 2025). Beyond the increased attraction for mass murderers and school-shooters glorified through the social-media, the recent emergence of many organized online groups actively victimizing and recruiting vulnerable adolescents to promote, glorify and act out extreme violence is utterly worrisome, while being still relatively unknown among youth practitioners. This webinar presents the experience of a specialized clinical team who receives clinical requests from schools, ED and security agencies regarding nihilistic violence in adolescents, with the aim of helping social workers to recognize and address this phenomenon. The webinar describes key clinical manifestations related to adherence to nihilistic violence and proposes cues to support assessment, and intervention. Finally, the impact of nihilistic violence on the clinician is discussed, including means to protect clinicians from the distress that these forms of violence evoke.
At the end of this presentation the participant will be able to:
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Define nihilistic violence and its associated features
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Describe some of the characteristics of vulnerable youth attracted by nihilistic violence
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Delineate avenues of interventions
