Objective: Migraine is a problem most frequently encountered in the childhood and adolescence periods. Migraine adversely affects the psychosocial development of children and adolescents and reduces the quality of life concerning health. In this study, what was aimed to be achieved is not only to evaluate the co-existing psychiatric diseases, the levels of anxiety and depression as well as the quality of life, but also to evaluate the interrelation between these parameters, in these children with migraine.
Methods: Out of those patients with migraine followed up at the department of Child Neurology, Medical Faculty of Erciyes University, 35 children, 9 to16 year-old, and their families were involved in the study. Those children with either epilepsy or EEG abnormality, or clinical mental retardation, or coexisting physical or chronic diseases were excluded from the study. Matched with the patient group regarding age and gender , the control group, taking a permission from the Governorship of Kayseri, Provincial Directorate Of National Education, was comprised of 35 children and adolescents who were attending Fatma Zehra Dulgeroglu Primary School and Sehit Nuri Aydin Sagir Anatolian High School and did not have any psychiatric, physical or chronic diseases. All the children, adolescents and families enrolled in the study were kindly asked to fill in a socio-demographic data form. The psychiatric diseases, interviewing with all the cases in the study, were scanned using schedule of affective disorders and schizophrenia for school aged children - present and life time version (K-SADS-PL). All the children and adolescents enrolled in the study were asked to fill in a form regarding child depression inventory, state-trait anxiety inventory-child, and pediatric quality of life inventory. In cases with migraine, in addition to these, to determine the level of migraine limitations, pedMIDAS scale and to determine ache/pain severity, VAS scale was conducted.
Results: Depression scale scores of children and adolescents with migraine were found to be higher than those of the control group. There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of anxiety scores. Life quality perception of children and adolescents with migraine, and life quality perception of parents concerning their children were detected lower compared with the healthy controls. In psychiatric evaluation of the group with migraine by using K-SADS-PL, substantial psychiatric diseases were detected. The frequency of psychiatric diagnosis in girls with migraine was statistically significantly higher than that in boys. It was found that pain severity was associated with life quality scores, level of migraine limitation, depression scale scores and child state anxiety inventory scores.
Conclusion: It has been thought that migraine, in children and adolescents, adversely affected the psycho-social development, provided a basis for psychiatric diseases and led to a decline in the life quality. Further studies are required to explain the effects of migraine on children and adolescents, as well as the interaction of it with co-morbid situations.