Untangling the Association Between Migraine, Pain, and Anxiety: Examining Migraine and Generalized Anxiety Disorders in a Canadian Population Based Study

Abstract

Generalized anxiety disorder is robustly associated with migraine and targeted outreach and interventions are warranted.

Health Behaviors and Social Determinants of Migraine in a Canadian Population‐Based Sample of Adults Aged 45‐85 Years: Findings From the CLSA

“…Among men, anxiety was more strongly associated with diagnosed migraine than depression, a finding which is consistent with other work in the field. 41 Migraines are prevalent among individuals of white ethnicity, 11,45 a finding further corroborated by this study.…”

“…55 These findings align with other population health studies that show that headache-free individuals are more frequently in a relationship than those with headache/migraine. 57 While evidence shows that migraineurs are less likely to have someone they can rely on for important decision making, 41 we did not find an association between social support (MOS-SSS) and migraine prevalence in the present study. 29 Consistent with existing research, 29 we found higher social status to be related to lower odds of migraine for women after controlling for multiple measures of social support (eg, marital status, MOS-SSS) and other potential confounders (eg, SE, depressive symptoms).…”

“…Survey weights were adjusted to a mean of 1 so as to not artificially reduce the estimated variance. 41 Missing data were found to be within acceptable limits (<5%) for the variables of interest except for income (6.5%), thus we included a missing income category for statistical comparisons. Participants with missing data on any variable other than income were removed from analyses.…”

Early Life Stress in Adolescent Migraine and the Mediational Influence of Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety in a Canadian Cohort

“…Survey weights were computed by Statistics Canada, adjusted to a mean of 1 for analytical purposes, 36 and employed for reporting of proportions and statistical comparisons of respondent characteristics. Between-group descriptive comparisons using chi-square tests of independence and 2-tailed independent samples t-tests were conducted to explore characteristic differences between respondents whose parent reported health professionaldiagnosed migraine in the respondent and those who self-reported non-classified frequent headache.…”

“…No statistical power calculation was conducted prior to the study; the analyses were based on all available data. Survey weights were computed by Statistics Canada, adjusted to a mean of 1 for analytical purposes, 36 and employed for reporting of proportions and statistical comparisons of respondent characteristics. Regression-based techniques were unweighted.…”