Grief After Suicide: Cara Hunter MLA’s Story | JustMental
Grief After Suicide: Cara Hunter MLA on Loss, Advocacy, and a System Still Under Strain
This is not wellness. This is war against stigma.
Grief after suicide is not something most politicians talk about publicly, let alone honestly. Cara Hunter MLA does both. In a new episode of JustMentalTalk, the SDLP MLA for East Londonderry sat down with Karl Bennett to talk about losing her best friend to suicide, what that loss did to her, and how it shaped every part of the advocacy work she has done since, long before she ever stood for election.
Grief After Suicide, In Her Own Words
Cara was a mental health and suicide prevention advocate before she was ever a politician. That work began, in part, from personal loss, grief after suicide that she has chosen, on her own terms, to speak about honestly rather than keep private. In the episode, she talks about what that grief actually felt like, what it demanded of the people who loved her friend, and why the silence that so often surrounds a death like this only makes the grieving harder.
It is a conversation without scripts and without the careful distance politicians usually keep between their public role and their private life. That honesty is exactly why we wanted her on JustMentalTalk.
From Personal Loss to Political Advocacy
Cara’s advocacy did not stop at her own story. In 2020, she founded the Assembly’s Dual Diagnosis All-Party Group, bringing together health professionals, community organisations, and policymakers to address one of the most consistently underserved areas in the entire mental health system, the gap between addiction services and mental illness support, where too many people fall through simply because the two systems do not talk to each other.
She has also built a direct, personal following talking about mental health on TikTok and social media, a route into public conversation that most elected representatives simply do not take. In the episode, she talks about why she chose that platform, and what it has let her do that a press release or an Assembly speech never could.
Every Party, Now Including the SDLP
Cara’s appearance also marks a milestone for JustMentalTalk. Every other party grouping in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the UUP, Alliance, Sinn Féin, the DUP, the TUV, People Before Profit, and the Independent members, has now taken part in a JustMentalTalk conversation. With Cara’s episode, the SDLP has its say too, and it is a conversation grounded in exactly the kind of lived experience this platform exists to platform honestly.
A System Still Under Strain
The conversation does not stay only in the personal. Cara speaks plainly about the state of mental health waiting lists, the specific failures facing children and young people trying to access CAMHS, and the workforce pressures behind both. She is direct about the gap between what successive Executives have said about mental health and what they have actually been willing to fund, and about whether cross-party agreement on issues like dual diagnosis survives contact with real budget decisions, or quietly falls away once the group photo is taken.
It is, in short, exactly the kind of conversation JustMental exists to have: personal enough to be honest, and political enough to matter.
If This Has Affected You
If anything in Cara’s story touches something close to home, please know you are not alone, and support is available. Lifeline NI is free and confidential, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on 0808 808 8000. Samaritans can be reached free at any time on 116 123.
