Together with our partners in the Suicide Prevention Consortium we have been exploring suicide and stigma with Showmen*.
This is part of a blog series where we have explored this topic with different communities.
As of 2021, there were 4,685 people in England and Wales who identified themselves as Showman. A recent study and exhibition It’s All a Show: Fairground Showmen, Identity & Mental Health revealed that 68% of people in the Showmen community across the UK and Ireland have been affected by suicide.
We spoke with a Showmen Traveller woman at the exhibition to hear about how suicide was discussed within her community and what she sees as important to improving suicide prevention within her community.
She highlighted that language is an important tool to improve suicide prevention as well as the need for people in the Showmen community to be included in any suicide prevention work about their community.
For this project we worked with the Showman’s Mental Health Awareness Charity. They are a charity founded and run by people from the Showmen and fairground community and aim to break the sigma around mental health in their community. To find out more visit https://www.showmensmentalhealth.com/
* The term Showmen is used to include men, women and children from the British fairground community as the preferred term used by the majority of the community to refer to themselves. However, we do acknowledge that some choose to use Showpeople or other terms.