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Intense grief attacks: An investigation into the factor structure of a bereavement-related phenomenon
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1 Department of Psychology, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia,
United States of America
2 Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Científica del Sur, Lima,
Perú
3 Department of Psychology, Universidad Señor de Sipán, Chiclayo,
Perú
4 Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, Portland, Oregon,
United States of America
5 Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee,
United States of America
JCBP, 025290052 https://doi.org/10.36922/JCBP025290052
Received: 15 July 2025 | Revised: 2 September 2025 | Accepted: 10 September 2025 | Published online: 25 September 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract
Grief attacks are a highly distressing and potentially debilitating bereavement-related experience. Although empirical research on these intense eruptions of loss-related anguish is limited, the literature suggests that this phenomenon consists of a mixture of both panic attack and grief symptoms. The present study examined the factor structure of intense grief attack symptoms using data from 303 bereaved adults. The confirmatory factor analysis results corroborate the literature by supporting a two-factor model of the phenomenon. These findings not only support anecdotal and clinical accounts of grief attacks but also provide partial psychometric support for the Grief Attack Questionnaire in measuring these sudden, unanticipated, and overwhelming responses to bereavement.
Keywords
Grief attacks
Factor analysis
Panic attacks
Grief attack questionnaire
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
Sherman Aclaracion Lee is an Editorial Board Member of this journal, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, other authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.
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