Personality Features and Reactions of Subjects With Migraine

Does attachment anxiety increase vulnerability to headache?

“…Results are consistent with Bowlby's [13] view of attachment as a psychobiological system of emotion regulation in which the anxiety component of insecure attachment plays a role in threat perception, as well as models in which attachment anxiety can operate as a vulnerability factor for chronic and acute pain and for headache [4,5,7]. This study aids in understanding the role of interpersonal factors in headache onset, originally described by Wolff [83]. Given the ubiquity of, and disability occasioned by, primary headaches [84], an understanding of headache vulnerability factors such as attachment insecurity is important.…”

Personality in patients with migraine evaluated with the "Temperament and Character Inventory"

“…Early clinical descriptions of the personality of patients with migraine (PWM) performed by Wolf [1] included such characteristics as ambitiousness, extreme tidiness, perfectionism, inflexibility, resentment and aggression. Later authors corroborated these observations [2,3], although their evaluations lacked standardised questionnaires and control groups.…”

“…The objectives of the present study are: (1) to assess personality in a sample of Mexican PWM, using the TCI; and (2) to compare their profiles with two healthy controls and a group of non-migraine pain controls. We hypothesised that the TCI domains altered in PWM will have a strong correlation with the mechanisms of migraine in the central nervous system.…”

Present and previous psychopathology of juvenile onset migraine: a pilot investigation by Child Behavior Checklist

“…From the time of Wolff's early portrait of the childhood personality characteristics of migraine patients, the research began to explore the association of headache first with broad personality traits and then with distinct psychiatric symptoms [7,8]. Maratos and Wilkinson underlined that an "emotional upset" is the most frequently reported (86%) precipitating factor [9].…”