The “broken heart syndrome”, when grief kills: “It’s not something exceptional”

We learned the sad news this Friday: Joe Garcia, the husband of a teacher killed in the Uvalde shooting, is died of a heart attack. His relatives assure that he died of grief after losing his wife, Irma Garcia, with whom he had been with for 25 years.

But is it possible to die of grief? Can the traumas and other ailments that affect us affect the heart, to the point that it stops beating? Answer with Bernard Rimé, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at UCLouvain and Emmanuelle Zech, Doctor of Psychology, Full Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at UCLouvain.