According to recent studies, it’s possible to die from heart failure after an intense emotional event such as a death, divorce or traumatic break-up. It’s called Stress Cardiomyopathy. It happens when intense emotional events cause adrenaline levels in the body to rise to such high levels for days on end that the heart begins to die.
Stress hormones are so high that they begin to "stun" the heart into failure. The occurrence was often misdiagnosed as a heart attack. Researchers found that, even though symptoms are similar, they are slightly different conditions.
Because of the massive amounts of continuous adrenaline, or epinephrine, from emotional events the body can experience chest pain, fluid in the lungs, shortness of breath and even heart failure.