Headache and personality: results of a community sample of young adults

Abstract

The present study investigated the association between personality, symptoms and headache subtypes in a prospective longitudinal epidemiologic study of a cohort of 19- and 20-year-olds in Zurich, Switzerland. Personality was assessed by the Freiburg Personality Inventory (FPI), a standardized self-report personality instrument, which yields nine primary factors and three secondary factors. The Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) was employed to examine somatic and psychological symptoms. Subjects with migraine exhibited elevated rates of neuroticism compared to non-migraine subjects on FPI. Somatization was the only primary symptom factor on the SCL-90 which discriminated between subjects with migraine and those without migraine. Persons with migraine with aura exhibited greater impairment than any of the other headache subtypes or controls on both the FPI and SCL-90. Subjects with tension-type headache did not differ from controls on any of the personality or symptom factors.