Amplifying voices: Highlighting health inequalities in the Gypsy/Traveller community.
Project officer Sahaj highlights some of the experiences of stigma and discrimination faced by Gypsy/Traveller community members and some potential solutions.
“We are not hard-to-reach but are hardly reached.”
-MECOPP community member
Background
This case study highlights some of the experiences of stigma and discrimination faced by Gypsy/Traveller community members and some potential solutions.
See Me attended health rallies organised by Minority Ethnic Carers of People Project (MECOPP), which is an Edinburgh-based charity providing a range of support and services to informal carers and those in receipt of care across Scotland.
MECOPP works with communities who experience disadvantages due to ethnicity, age, disability and other protected characteristics (as described by MECOPP).
See Me’s relationship with MECOPP began after acquiring funding for their project Judged, as a part of the Anti-Stigma Arts Fund and have continued to work with them.
The organisation’s work with Gypsy/Traveller communities, Community Health Matters, has been built around community development and community engagement principles.
MECOPP has worked with community members to ensure their voices are heard. This has in part involved training local Gypsy/Traveller women as community workers to support others in the community. MECOPP believes that “Gypsy/Travellers are the experts of their own lives, experiences and aspirations”.
They don’t try to speak for the communities’ experiences.
Why is it important?
Research has highlighted some of the inequalities faced by Gypsy/Traveller communities, for example, suicide rates are six times higher for Gypsy/Traveller women and almost seven times higher for Gypsy/Traveller men than the general population (Sweeny & Dolling, 2020).
Poor mental health is related to social factors such as exclusion from the community, poor living conditions, low educational achievement and pervasive stigma and discrimination (Greenfields, 2020).
This intersectional stigma affects overall health outcomes for the community.
Other barriers when accessing services include, difficulty registering with the GPs, prejudiced staff attitudes and lack of trust in services.
Working alongside MECOPP community workers and members
MECOPP organised health and wellbeing events in East and West Lothian from May 2023 to February 2024 to hear the views of community members who they had longstanding relationships with.
Other service providers from NHS Lothian, dental services, and many others were there to understand communities’ perspectives and provide information and support.
See Me’s communities and priority groups team was invited to share resources and engage with the different groups, including older women and young people over four wellbeing fairs in Dumbarton, Musselburgh, Kirkintilloch and Edinburgh. Some sessions involved See Me setting up a stall and talking one-on-one with the community members. Others included round table discussions.
Some of the community experiences shared with us are highlighted below:
1. Mental health stigma
We heard that mental health is not a comfortable topic within Gypsy/Traveller communities: “Just get on with it” is a common response, or thinking that people are “looking for attention”.
“If you hear ‘mental health’ people just think, ‘right – you are ‘mental’”.
Several women opened up about their personal or family experiences, each saying they did not generally speak about this.
We informally asked how communities would describe mental health stigma and the responses were: “judged”, “weak”, “pretentious”, “shame”, and “fear”. They described when they have tried to open up, they are told to “stand straight and be strong”.
“Most of us are traumatised, but do not know if [our families] would understand.”
2. Time and attitudes shift
Older women said they hoped that things (in relation to mental health) had changed for the younger generations and the stigma had reduced. Still, the younger women present said it was the same experience for them, which points to the ongoing need for anti-stigma work.
3. Understanding the culture
We also asked what community members would like services to know so that they are better able to provide support.
A significant theme that emerged from the discussions was cultural understanding. One community member who experienced multiple health problems expressed that a GP asked them to stay in one place to get better help. However, travelling is a central part of their identity.
“I said the house is killing me, but they could not understand how I feel that way about living in a house.”
4. Community support
A participant said: “Kids are a priority for us Gypsy/Traveller women, like in many other cultures, they don’t want to leave us or stay away from us. And what would happen next if I do talk about it [mental health]? The social services will take away my children thinking that I am unable to take care of them properly because I have brain problems.
“The way we live, they might feel it is not an ideal environment for a child to grow up in and other people do not understand that this is a part of our culture.”
It is also important to consider the historical context. There is a fear among women to disclose their poor mental health or suicide ideation because they believe they would be seen as incapacitated and their children would be taken away by social services, which has been a case in the past for the community (Cemlyn, 2006).
The participant went on to say: “What’s big for you (outside community) is small for us, but what might seem small to you, is big to us.”
They indicated it would be helpful for service providers to be from the same community because they can better understand the day-to-day life and struggles of the community.
5. Employment, mental health and identity
People expressed that they have experienced a lot of discrimination (especially in employment), and that this makes people feel that they have something to hide about their identity as Gypsy/Travellers.
This in turn has a huge impact on people’s mental health and highlights the importance of an intersectional lens.
There are many factors which contribute to the poorer outcomes Gypsy/Traveller communities experience in relation to their mental health.
These factors range from systemic barriers, such as a lack of cultural awareness and tailored service provision to pervasive stigma and discrimination.
Both long-term, meaningful community engagement and targeted anti-stigma work are needed to bridge the current gaps and barriers.
References
Glossary
Intersectional stigma: Intersectional stigma describes how social identities and structural inequities shape and influence each other (Sievwright et al., 2022).
This means we cannot understand any one stigma (more often discussed in terms of prejudice when related to other protected characteristics) in isolation from another, which might simultaneously be at play, compounding negative experiences, e.g. of services as well as health outcomes.