A love come to grief

Broken heart syndrome is medical recognition finally of what literature has always known, that anguish and sorrow can kill, says Sharon Ní Chonchuir

TALES of death from a broken heart feature throughout history. Irish mythology has Deirdre of the Sorrows, who died of grief following the loss of her lover Naoise, while modern celebrity has Simon Monjack, the husband of starlet Brittany Murphy, who died of a heart attack five months after her premature death.

The physical impact of thoughts and emotions on your heart was dismissed as sentimental nonsense but this view is changing. In the past decade, cardiac researchers have identified cases of severe emotional distress damaging the heart. They’ve given it a name — stress cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome.