Study pinpoints four signs of a grief attack
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- Sherman Lee, a psychologist at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, co-published a study of almost 250 people who had experienced grief attacks to scientifically define the condition, which had been recognized clinically for decades but not rigorously researched.
- Lee's research identified four main characteristics of a grief attack: panic (dizziness, shortness of breath, fear), yearning, despair, and incoherent thinking — and the team created a tool to recognize and evaluate these symptoms.
- Grief attacks are distinguished from panic attacks by the simultaneous activation of two systems usually studied separately: the fear system (sweating, shaking) and the attachment system (yearning thoughts), making them "a unique class of human experience."
- Lee postulates two contributing factors: anxiety sensitivity — the fear that anxiety symptoms are physically harmful, which makes people five times more likely to be diagnosed with panic disorder — and compounding stress build-up.
- Therese Rando first explored the phenomenon in 1991 under the label "sudden upsurges of grief," making Lee's study the first to scientifically validate the symptoms using data from large numbers of people.
- During a grief attack, multiple brain regions activate at once — the amygdala (fear), the periaqueductal grey (yearning/flight-or-freeze), the nucleus accumbens (craving for the deceased), and the anterior cingulate cortex (pain and emotion).
- Lee's coping research suggests people who allow the experience to come and go fare better than those who try to distract themselves — a finding consistent with mindfulness approaches — and advises seeking professional help when grief impairs daily functioning.
- A large study of more than 10,000 grieving people cited by Lee found that 50% reported a sensation of a presence of the deceased, and one-third perceived hearing their voice.
Why it matters: Lee's study is the first to move "grief attacks" from clinical anecdote — first described by Therese Rando in 1991 — into a scientifically validated, measurable condition with four defined features, giving clinicians a diagnostic tool. With anxiety sensitivity raising panic-disorder risk fivefold and stress as a compounding trigger, the research gives mourners and therapists a concrete way to recognize episodes that combine physical panic with acute yearning rather than dismissing them as ordinary sadness.
