Personality disorders in chronic daily headache:: a study in the general population

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The prevalence and type of personality disorders in unselected patients with chronic daily headache (CDH) are unknown. The aim of this study was to analyze the personality profile of patients with CHD is the general population. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Eighty-nine patients with CDH taken from a sample of 1,883 unselected subjects from the general population completed the EPQ-A (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Adult). RESULTS: Sixty percent of the patients with CDH presented a personality profile with high values in the scales measuring both the neurotic component (N scale) and the psychotic component (P scale). No significant differences were observed in the percentage of patients with high scores in these scales according to the diagnoses of transformed migraine (TM) or chronic tension headache (CTH). However, the percentage of questionnaires with high or not adapted scores was significantly greater in the patients abusing of analgesic drugs than is the non-abusers (82% versus 53%). With regard to the personality profile, we found a greater, but not significant, percentage of patients with CDH with a high grade of neuroticism in comparison with psychoticism (52% versus 36%). There were no significant differences in the personality profile between the two main subgroups of CCH, TM and CTC: 56% of the patients with TM showed high grade of neuroticism and 47% psychoticism. versus 52% and 30%, respectively in the case of the patients with CTC. Sixty-eight percent of the analgesic abusers presented neurotic features and 50% psychotic features versus 47% and 32%, respectively, for the non abusers. CONCLUSIONS: There is a high percentage of subjects with CDH in the general population who present high scores in the scales measuring the two basic components of the personality, such as neuroticism, and psychoticism. This personality profile is still found more frequently in patients presenting symptomatic medication abuse.