Anxiety, depression linked to greater headache-related disability in pediatric population

Key takeaways:

• Survey on behavioral health, headache-related disability answered by 8,006 persons aged 6 to 17.
• Those with anxiety, depression or both reported higher headache-related disability compared with those without.

AUSTIN, Texas – Children and adolescents diagnosed with anxiety, depression or both had greater headache-related disability compared with those without, according to a poster presented at the American Headache Society annual meeting.

“Anxiety and depression are common comorbidities of headache disorders for children and adolescents,” Christina Murphy, PhD, a pediatric psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues wrote.

Murphy and fellow researchers sought to examine whether symptoms of anxiety and depression in a younger population are associated with headache-related disability and whether intervention of behavioral health providers is associated with less disability in the same population.

Their cross-sectional study included more than 8,000 individuals aged 6 to 17 (median age 13.5 years; 63% girls) asked to complete an outpatient neurology visit questionnaire relating to behavioral health, the pedMIDAS scale regarding headache-related disability, as well as a range of headache characteristics.

According to results, 19.3% of participants reported anxiety symptoms alone, 11.5% reported both anxiety and depression, with 1.7% reporting symptoms of depression alone. In addition, 45% of participants reported migraines and 24.4% reported probable migraine headache type.

Researchers found that diagnoses of anxiety, depression or both were associated with higher headache-related disability and increased probability of an increase in pedMIDAS scores than not having anxiety, depression or both — even after accounting for demographics, headache severity and frequency, as well as headache symptoms and triggers. Conversely, data showed the intervention of behavioral health providers was associated with greater headache-related disability when accounting for the items mentioned earlier.

“This is a complex group of patients with a high level of need who will likely benefit from integrated care,” Murphy and colleagues wrote.