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The Role of Personality in the Etiology of Chronic Headache
Author(s) -
Arena John G.,
Andrasik Frank,
Blanchard Edward B.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
headache: the journal of head and face pain
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.14
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1526-4610
pISSN - 0017-8748
DOI - 10.1111/j.1526-4610.1985.hed2506296.x
Subject(s) - neuroticism , personality , migraine , psychology , etiology , clinical psychology , tension headache , hysteria , chronic pain , big five personality traits , psychiatry , social psychology
SYNOPSIS Whether a neurotic personality is a precursor to or a consequence of the experience of living with chronic pain has been a topic of much heated debate in the psychosomatic research literature. To investigate this question, 151 chronic headache sufferers from three headache types (migraine, tension, combined), matched on age and gender, were divided into three equal groups on the basis of their percentage of life with headache. Each headache sufferer was administered a comprehensive battery of psychological tests. ANCOVAs, using age as the covariate and diagnosis and %‐life groupings as the between subjects factors, were then performed on the clinical scale data. Results indicated no significant differences greater than that expected by chance among the %‐life groups, indicating that the percentage of life one spends with head pain has no differential effect on a number of psychological test measures. One interpretation of the above results is that the characterological personality traits so often found in headache sufferers are not a result of the pain experience but in fact were present before the pain problem started.