Women with Migraines at Higher Risk of Depression

Filed in archive Studies on January 11, 2007

According to a new study published in the January 9, 2007 issue of Neurology (scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology), women with chronic headaches (especially migraines) are more likely to be depressed, feel tired and have a host of other severe physical symptoms.

According to this particular study that involved 1032 women in five states:

• Women with chronic headache were four times more likely than those with episodic headache to report symptoms of major depression.


• Chronic headache sufferers were also three times more likely to report a high degree of symptoms related to headache, such as low energy, trouble sleeping, nausea, dizziness, pain or problems during intercourse, and pain in the stomach, back, arms, legs, and joints.

In those patients diagnosed with severely disabling migraine, the study found the likelihood of major depression increased 32-fold if the patient also reported other severe symptoms.

According to study author Gretchen Tietjen, MD with the University of Toledo-Health Science Campus and a member of the American Academy of Neurology:

"Painful physical symptoms may provoke or be a manifestation of major depression in women with chronic headache, and depression may heighten pain perception. This relation between migraine and major depression suggests a common neurobiology.

Regardless of what's causing the link between migraine and depression, psychiatric disease such as depression complicates headache management and can lead to poorer outcomes for headache management."

Based on these findings, new studies are underway to test whether severe headache, severe physical symptoms and major depression may be linked through dysfunction of serotonin in the central nervous system.

Find more details from the full report.