MMPI personality profiles in patients with primary chronic daily headache: a case-control study.
2003
We assessed the psychological profile of a large sample of
patients with chronic daily headache (CDH) seen in tertiary
care. We used a case-control design to study 791 patients who
fell into the following categories: ARH
group, chronic migraine with analgesic overuse
(analgesic rebound headache, ARH), n=399;
CM group, chronic migraine
(CM) without analgesic overuse, n=158; and new daily persistent
headache (NDPH) group, n=69. These groups were compared to two
control groups: 1, migraine, n=100; 2, chronic posttraumatic
headache (CPTH), n=65. We assessed personality and
psychopathology with the Minnesota multiphasic personality
inventory (MMPI)-2. The number of patients with Tscores ≥65 and
≤40 were analyzed by the two-sided Fischer’s exact test. The ARH
and CM groups had a higher number of subjects with T-scores ≥65,
when compared to the migraine group, on the following scales: 1
(hypochondrias), 2 (depression), 8 (schizophrenia) and 0 (social
introversion). No differences were observed between the NDPH and
migraine groups. Considering CPTH as the control group, the
pattern we found was quite the opposite of that described above:
NDPH group presented a higher number of subjects with T-scores
≥65 on the following scales: 1, 2, 7 (psychasthenia) and 8. ARH
and CM groups had significantly higher T-scores for scale 7
alone. NDPH showed T-scores ≤40 in scale 9 when compared to both
control groups. We conclude that: (1) psychopathological factors
are common in CDH patients, and appear to be a consequence of
the chronification process; (2) low scores on scale 9
(hypomania) may relate to the development of NDPH; (3)
psychopathological profiles differ among the subgroups of CDH
and the MMPI-2 is reliable in identifying such patterns; and (4)
psychological assessment is an essential step in the evaluation
and treatment of patients with CDH.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
21
References
33
Citations
NaN
KQI