Depression and Migraine Study
I’ve never mentioned this study, published in 2003, but it may help us clarify the relationship between headache, migraine and depression. Dr Naomi Breslau, of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, headed up a two year long study, which was published in the journal Neurology.
Dr Breslau and her team interviewed 1186 people – about 42% had migraine, 13% had severe headaches, and 45% had no history of headache or migraine. So the question was, who had suffered major depression?
We already know that there’s a link between migraine and depression, and this study confirmed it. 42% of migraine patients had experienced major depression sometime in their lives. But there were some interesting findings beyond that which caught my attention.
First, although a large percentage of the headache (non-migraine) sufferers had also suffered from depression, the numbers were far lower that with migraine – 36%. This seems to lend credence to the belief that there’s a biological factor here, it’s not just a psychological response to the suffering. Only 16% of the non-headache/migraine group had suffered from major depression.
It also may come as a surprise to some people that the numbers were so low. Not even half of the migraineurs had ever had major depression. Of those that did, it was not necessarily constant, just "some time in their lives". Although the link is clear, the belief that all migraineurs are depressed just doesn’t hold up.
Dr Breslau has studied migraine and depression for a number of years. In 1994 she published a study which confirmed her belief that migraine and depression were bidirectional – each one seemed to make the other worse. This study showed also that people who had major depression tended to get migraine attacks, even though they had never had one when first interviewed.
These are still only basic studies – much more needs to be done to understand exactly how this relationship works, and what can be done about it. Read more about the "Comorbidity of migraine and depression".