Being followed home, receiving unwanted texts, or sensing someone’s eyes on you at every turn — most people call it “just creepy.” But Harvard researchers now warn it’s far deadlier than that. Stalking, they’ve found, doesn’t just rattle the nerves; it can push women towards heart disease and stroke, raising risks by as much as 41 percent. In other words, that pounding in your chest when you feel unsafe is not just fear. It could be your heart getting weaker.

Impact of stalking on women’s health: What Harvard study found

Over 20 years, researchers tracked 66,270 women who initially had no history of cardiovascular disease. They tracked them from 2001 to 2021, and the findings were startling:

• Women who reported being stalked had a 41 percent higher risk of developing heart disease compared to those who had not.
• For women who had gone as far as filing restraining orders, often a sign of more severe or persistent harassment, the risk shot up to 70 percent.
• In simple and plain words: The more frequent or intense the stalking, the higher the risk becomes.

These aren’t abstract numbers. They represent women whose daily lives, marked by constant vigilance and fear, are affected by measurable damage to a vital organ. Researchers could find a relation the other way round as well, meaning women who had records of cardiovascular issues of any kind were stalked in the past.

Why stalking breaks the body as well as the mind

Stress is not a fleeting emotion; it’s a complex chemical reaction. Living in constant fear keeps the body on red alert, flooding it with stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. In small doses, these hormones are lifesaving; they prime us to fight or flee. But when switched on for months or years or with high intensity, they erode the heart, inflame blood vessels, and raise blood pressure. So, when a woman has to stay hyper-aware, checking over her shoulder, scanning every room, dreading every message, her body pays a price. And now we know that sense of “always on edge” is more than psychological torture; the physical effects of stalking on women’s health are quite clear.

One of the study’s senior authors, Dr Karestan Koenen, didn’t mince words: “To many people, stalking doesn’t seem to be such a serious experience, as it often does not involve physical contact. But stalking has profound psychological consequences that can have physical implications.”

The health system needs to catch up. Doctors routinely ask patients about smoking, diet, and exercise when assessing heart risk. But should doctors also be asking: “Have you ever felt unsafe because someone won’t leave you alone?” Dr Koenen agrees. He suggests, “Common, non-contact forms of violence against women are health hazards and need to be considered as such, just like we consider smoking or poor diet.”

A cultural wake-up call

This is also a cultural wake-up call. In India, harassment of women is so rampant that it often goes unreported. We also have to give due credit to Bollywood for normalising and trivialising stalking as a gesture of love. But Harvard’s recent study proves that’s not the case, far from it. Even in real life, more often than not, stalking is brushed off as a stupid obsession. We do nothing about it, hoping it will just end on its own. But even if it does, it leaves a lasting impact. If stalking damages your heart as much as this study shows, then we need to address it as a problem. Stalking is not just something that makes you feel uneasy; it enters your body and corrodes it.

If there’s one thing that this study has made painfully clear, it is that protecting women from harassment isn’t just about safety; it’s about their survival. And more so in India. Because heart disease is the primary cause of death in Indian women. So, it is time we stop romanticising the idea of stalking or any sort of unwanted behaviour.

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