Insomnia, depressive signs and symptoms and quality of life in institutionalized elderly subjects

Abstract

Chronic daily headache (CDH) is a heterogeneous group of headaches that occurs 15 or more days per month, lasting more than four hours, including those associated with medication overuse. The objectives of this study were: to classify CDH; to assess the quality of life and level of stress of the patients with this type of headache. A hundred patients, from both sexes, with minimum age of 18 years old were prospectively studied. The inclusion criterion was the presence of primary headache with more than 4-hour duration, a frequency of 15 days or more monthly, in the last three months. The diagnosis was according to the second edition of the International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD-II) criteria. The SF-36 questionnaire to observe quality of life and Lipp´s Inventory of Stress Symptoms to diagnose stress were used. Patients with chronic organic disease were not included. The patients´ mean age was 38.8 years. The majority (87%) was women. CDH mean duration was 4.0 years. Applying the ICHD-II criteria, 17 different types of diagnosis were necessary to classify CDH of these patients. Among these types of diagnosis, 11 presented migraine (80% of the patients). The types with migraine had lower scores according to SF-36 either in physical function *Insônia, sinais e sintomas depressivos e Qualidade de Vida em idosos institucionalizados (Resumo).