{"id":774595,"date":"2026-09-18T10:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774595\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T10:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T10:22:10","slug":"msp-cara-mckee-considered-taking-own-life-over-chronic-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774595\/","title":{"rendered":"MSP Cara McKee considered taking own life over chronic pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

An MSP has said she considered taking her own life after being prescribed medication to treat chronic pain.<\/p>\n

Cara McKee, the Green MSP for the West of Scotland, is preparing to return to Holyrood next week after undergoing brain surgery for trigeminal neuralgia – a debilitating condition which affects nerves in the face and can cause shooting pain.<\/p>\n

Talking to the BBC’s Scotcast podcast<\/a>, the mother-of-three said it had taken almost 30 years for her to receive a diagnosis. <\/p>\n

At first doctors thought it was dental pain and she was sent to a dentist to get a tooth out. She was also prescribed different types of medication.<\/p>\n

”I got put on one medication which I thought maybe helped a little bit, but it didn’t help all the way,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It also made me feel very negative. To be honest I had suicidal ideation. It just seemed like it would be more sensible if I wasn’t there and the kids could be looked after better.<\/p>\n

”I can remember how logical it was to me. I didn’t feel really upset about it, which is what I imagined. It just seemed like a sensible path.”<\/p>\n

McKee spoke to her husband about how she was feeling and she went back to the doctor who took her off the medication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An MSP has said she considered taking her own life after being prescribed medication to treat chronic pain.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-774595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}