This page shares the health and wellbeing experiences of Roma communities in our own words and includes a link to a Practitioner resource which is part of a toolkit developed for practitioners working in the field. 

Rom Romeha works on research, Roma policy for government, and training for organisations in Roma culture and inclusion.

Our Health, Our Experience

The Health Gap Is Real, and It Is Not Our Fault

Our communities in Scotland live shorter lives than our neighbours. Our mental health is under sustained pressure. Our children carry health burdens that children in the same city, on the same street, are not carrying. This is not because of who we are. It is because of how we have been treated, generation after generation, by systems that were not built with us in mind.

The health gap between Roma people and the rest of the population is not a mystery. It is the predictable result of decades of discrimination, poverty, poor housing, and exclusion from the very services that are supposed to keep people well.

What the Numbers Say About Our Health in Scotland

The data on Roma health in Scotland is stark. These are not abstract statistics. They describe the people in our community, our families, our neighbours.

• Roma people are 2 to 3.5 times more likely to report age-adjusted poor general health than the general population

• Mental health and suicide rates are approximately 6 times higher in Roma women and 7 times higher in Roma men

• Rates of limiting long-term health conditions are significantly elevated across our communities

 NHS Race & Health Observatory: Roma health data including long-term conditions, general health rates, and mental health statistics

Scotland's Census 2011: Gypsy/Traveller Data Tables, general health, limiting illness, and disability data

These figures should stop anyone in their tracks. They are among the starkest health inequalities documented for any community in Scotland.

Mental Health: Still a Taboo, Still Unaddressed

Poor mental health is increasingly talked about in our communities, but it remains deeply stigmatised. The pressure to stay silent, to manage within the family, to not show weakness to the outside world, is real. And the outside world has not made it easy to speak up. Too often, when our people have reached out for mental health support, they have been met with services that do not understand our culture, our language, or our history.

The result is that poor mental health problems go unrecognised, untreated, and unrecorded. The true scale of mental health need in our community is almost certainly higher than the data shows.

Why We Do Not Always Use Health Services

Some of our people return to their home countries for treatment rather than use local health services in Scotland. This is not stubbornness or ignorance. It is a rational response to services that have historically made us feel unwelcome, that we struggle to navigate, or that we simply do not trust.

That distrust has been built over a long time. It does not dissolve because a new service opens or a leaflet is printed in a language we understand better than English. It dissolves when services demonstrate, consistently and over time, that they see us as people worthy of care.

We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for the same quality of care, delivered in a way that actually reaches us.

What Is Being Done: Community-Led Change in Govanhill

The Rom Romeha programme in Govanhill, Glasgow, runs peer education sessions in partnership with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to improve healthcare access for Roma residents. This model works because it is built on trust. It goes to where our community is. It speaks our languages. It is delivered by people who understand our lives.

This is what effective health outreach for our community looks like. Not waiting for us to come through a door we have learned not to trust, but building the relationship that makes that door feel safe.

The European Picture: Our Communities Across the Continent

The health inequalities our community faces in Scotland are not unique to here. Across Europe, Roma people live on average 10 to 25 years less than the general population in the same countries. That gap exists in Romania, in Slovakia, in Bulgaria, in Hungary, in the Czech Republic, and in country after country where our people have lived for generations but been excluded from the systems that sustain everyone else.

EPHA: Closing the Life Expectancy Gap, addressing Roma life expectancy inequalities in Europe

Roma Health: Overcoming Social Factors in Europe

These outcomes are caused by exclusion, discrimination, and a lack of access to quality healthcare. They are compounded by poverty, poor housing, and the cumulative weight of living as a marginalised community in societies that have never fully accepted us. Mainstream services across Europe know about these disparities. Too few are doing enough to change them.

We deserve better. Our children deserve better. 

And the professionals and institutions with the power to change this have a responsibility to act.