It is the “strong” members of her community, with “strong families around them” who survive daily humiliations, degradations and messaging from Irish society that they “are not wanted”, says Traveller mother and grandmother Margaret Wall.
She had wanted to be a nurse as a child, but left school at 14 as the level of “bullying was beyond normal”. Now an after-school teacher in Ballyfermot, Dublin she says she has lost “so many” to suicide, including her grandfather and her uncle.
“There would have been a lot of mental health on my father’s side. There were a lot of overdoses. I’ve lost cousins and nieces and nephews, children of friends. I know of three suicides in the last week – one a 14 year-old boy. It’s devastating. It destroys families, and then there’s the fear of the copycat contagion. You’d be at the funeral thinking: ‘Who’s next?”
Speaking as a report is published on Wednesday that makes a direct link between anti-Traveller racism and the community’s suicide rate which is six times that of the general population, she says many Travellers feel they will never be accepted in Irish society.
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[ Opinion: Contemptuous neglect of Travellers inflicts cultural traumaOpens in new window ]
“If you try to go out to a hotel or pub you can’t get in anywhere. They say, ‘private function’ or. ‘regulars only’. You go into a shop and automatically you are followed. You are being watched and labelled all the time.”
Traveller children are still bullied in schools, and teachers demonstrate low expectations of them, she says. “Can you imagine what’s happening for a child experiencing that? On a daily basis I see children saying, ‘They were calling me names’ or ‘That teacher never listens to me’. It destroys them within themselves.”
Travellers live “in fear” she says. “They are blamed for things they haven’t done. Their children are taken off them. There is fear of everybody – of Tusla, of guards, of teachers.” Many, she says, “just can’t take it. They say: ‘I’m never going to be accepted’”.
There have been allies in the settled community in her life. She remembers a neighbour who, when she was a child in Co Carlow, told her to never let racist comments get her down, and a teacher, Mrs Daly, who told her repeatedly she was “brilliant” and made her “feel proud”.
“She was a lovely, lovely teacher who accepted me as me. We need the acceptance of the settled people, so they’re not hating us all the time,” she says. “It would save a lot of children.”
The new report found that relentless racism and discrimination is the “primary cause” of suicide among Travellers.
The rate of suicide in the Traveller community is six times higher than the general population.
More than two-thirds of Travellers have lost a loved one to suicide and almost 90 per cent are worried about suicide in their community, says the report which focuses on the rapidly growing Traveller community of south county Dublin.
Conducted by independent consultants S3 Solutions, which specialises in community and voluntary sector research, the study was commissioned by the Clondalkin Travellers Development Group, Tallaght Travellers Development Group and Ballyfermot Traveller Action Project.
Drawing on 112 responses to an online survey, semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, and five in-depth focus groups with 19 Travellers, researchers found around 85 per cent of respondents “knew someone with depression or who ‘suffers with their nerves’ “.
While drugs, alcohol, depression, poverty and financial pressures were identified as key causes of suicide, “there was consistent reference to daily experiences of discrimination that have an impact on mental health”.
If you are affected by any issue in this article, please contact Pieta House on 1800-247247 or Samaritans can be contacted 24/7 on freephone 116 123 and email at jo@samaritans.ie
