Together with our partners in the Suicide Prevention Consortium we have been exploring suicide and stigma with Gypsy people.
This is part of a blog series where we have explored this topic with different communities.
For this project we worked with Friends, Families and Travellers. They are a national charity that works to end racism and discrimination against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people and to protect the right to pursue a nomadic way of life.
As of 2021, there were 71,440 people in England and Wales who identified their ethnicity as Gypsy or Irish Traveller. There is currently no national data on Gypsy people and suicide in England. A 2023 report from Friends, Families and Travellers highlights that their casework indicates a disproportionally high prevalence of suicide amongst the communities they work with. They point out that the NHS does not consistently collect ethnicity data on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Without national data it's hard to create a full picture of suicide among these communities.
We spoke with a Gypsy woman about suicide and stigma within her community.
She highlighted a need for more education within her community to learn language around feelings and thoughts from an early age. To achieve this, she highlighted the English government need to fund suicide prevention activity for Gypsy communities.
To find out more about the organisation Friends, Families and Travellers visit https://www.gypsy-traveller.org/