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A Reflection On The Eyes Of A Therapist

Decent Essays

This essay is a reflection of what I have learned to date with reference to sociology. Through the eyes of a therapist I will explore and demonstrate inequalities and social issues, and how they contribute to mental illness and psychological distress within the travelling community. I will consider the consequences of social issues on my own therapeutic work of working with a person from the travelling community. Travellers are a minority ethnic group that have nomadic traditions. By the wider community travellers have been “defined as deviants or misfits” (Quinn, Kennedy, Matthews, & Kiely, 2005, p. 232). In the 2011 census Ireland’s traveller population was 29,495 (Ethnic and Cultural Background, 2016) In 1960, Justice minister Charles Haughey stated to The Commission on Itinerancy that they “acknowledge the fact that there can be no final solution to the problems created by itinerants until they are absorbed into the general community” (Quinn, Kennedy, Matthews, & Kiely, 2005). This statement was full of racism and inequalities, and looked at travellers as a problem that needed to be addressed urgently. In 1991, Haughey addressed the situation very different, he stated that all local authorities take urgent action to respect the Travelling community and to develop a better understanding of their way of life (Quinn, Kennedy, Matthews, & Kiely, 2005).. Since this statement in 1991, twenty-five years later and not much has changed, racism against travellers still remains

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