The study, which is the first to investigate this and to compare it with people whose spouse died or survived from something other than a heart attack, also found that men were more susceptible to depression and suicide after their wife’s survival or death from an acute myocardial infarction (AMI), than women.

Using Danish registries, including the National Civil Status Registry that shows whether people are married or not, researchers in the USA and Denmark compared 16,506 spouses of people who died from an AMI between 1997 and 2008 with 49,518 spouses of people who died from causes unrelated to AMI.