Factors Associated With Migraine‐Related Quality of Life and Disability in Adolescents: A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

Objectives-This study examined factors associated with impaired quality of life and functioning in a sample of treatment-seeking adolescent migraineurs.Subjects-The 37 participants were 51.4% female, and averaged 14.3 years of age and 4.1 migraines per month for the previous 36 months.Procedure-The Migraine-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire, questionnaire items inquiring about missed activities, and headache diary recordings of missed and impaired activity time served as dependent measures. Variables studied were age; gender; migraine frequency, duration, and severity; presence of nausea, photophobia, or phonophobia; and number of visits to an emergency department in the previous year.Results-Three hierarchical forward regressions and one logistic regression, controlling for age and gender, revealed that the presence of nausea and at least one emergency department visit predicted poorer quality of life and a greater number of missed activities in these adolescent migraineurs. The presence of migraine-related missed activity hours from headache diaries was predicted by being male, having higher combined photophobia and phonophobia sensitivity scores, as well as more frequent and severe migraines. Greater impairment was predicted by having longer average duration attacks.Conclusions-These preliminary findings suggest that the continued development of effective treatment approaches to alleviate pain, suffering, and disability in adolescent migraineurs is required. In particular, evidence for the impact of nausea and sensitivities suggests that they may be important targets for treatment. As well, adolescent migraineurs with a history of a visit to an emergency department in the previous year likely experience greater individual and family distress, more disability, and poorer quality of life that require thoughtful, comprehensive treatment to prevent the development of more severe headache difficulties. Keywordsadolescent migraine; quality of life; disability In the United States, approximately 7% of female and 5% of male adolescents (aged 12 to 17 years) experience migraine. 1 It has been established that, in adults, migraine impairs

Quality of Life and Health‐Related Disability in Children With Migraine

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The assessment of disability in children and adolescents with headache: Adopting PedMIDAS in an epidemiological study

“…Future studies should apply more than one measure of headache related disability, distress, or respectively quality of life (Walker and Green, 1991;Eccleston et al, 2005;Tkachuk et al, 2003;Merlijn et al, 2006) in order to explore the underlying constructs and their associations more closely. A comparison of their response characteristics, psychometric standards, predictive capacity for measures of health behaviour and sensitivity to change after interventions would give better grounds for deciding on their usefulness.…”

Headache Disability Among Adolescents: A Student Population‐Based Study

“…Disability is defined as the inability to work and function during a disease process 8 . Headaches can lead to significant disabilities in adolescents, by affecting their lives, their school performance, and their relationships with family members and peers 4,9‐12 . Although school attendance is a well‐defined indicator of functional disabilities in adolescents, we previously demonstrated that two‐thirds of adolescents with chronic daily headaches did not request any sick leaves from school 13 .…”