The rôle of psychological, health-behaviour and medical factors in adolescent headache.

Seventy adolescents suffering from recurrent tension and migraine headache were compared with headache-free controls on extensive psychosocial, health-behaviour and medical measures, using the students' own reports, parent and teacher assessments and information obtained from school health-records. Headache sufferers reported significantly more somatic symptoms and psychological distress than controls. Differences between the groups' reported anxiety were validated by similar outcomes from parent and teacher assessments. As expected, recurrent headache suffers were more often absent from school and used the school health-service more than controls. Furthermore, the parents of students with headache were more often divorced and those of students with migraine, in particular, suffered more frequently from headache and abdominal pain. Multivariate analyses indicated that six variables could accurately classify 85 per cent of students as headache suffers or controls.