Adolescent girls of parents with depression depression or a variety of psychopathology, including antisocial behaviour and drug dependence, have a higher risk for migraine headaches. Previous studies have shown a link between migraine and depression running in families but its link with psycholopathology is sparse. Therefore, researchers from America studied 674 teenage girls and their biological parents to find out how migraine headaches and mental health problems were linked across generations. The data regarding the parental and offspring major depression, antisocial behaviour, alcohol dependence and drug dependence were collected through structured interviews. It was found that teenaged girls of parents who suffered from depression, or alcohol or drug dependence had higher rates of migraine headache, compared with teen girls whose parents did not have these problems. Also, the elevated rates of migraine headaches were found in girls whose parent(s) had histories of antisocial behaviour (for example, law-breaking behaviour) and/or drug dependence. There were no significant associations found between the parents' psychopathology and adolescents' stomach problems, indicating that these links did not extend to all types of somatic problems in the girls. Somatic problems are physical problems that are a manifestation of emotional problems. The above findings emphasise the need to look at antisocial behaviour and substance-related problems when examining associations between migraine and psychopathology. Further investigation is however needed on inter-generational links between migraine and psychopathology.
Cephalalgia
January 2009