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The results of a small Taiwanese stuyd published in the current issue of Neurology lend support to a suspected link between migraines and depresison: One fifth of adolescents who suffered the headaches regularly were found to be at a high rsik of suicide and nearly half hda a psychiatric disroder such as depression or panic disorder. "Teens with chronic daily headaches should be screened for psychiatric disorders so they can get the treatment and help they need," says lead author Shuu-Jiun Wang, a neurologist at National Yang-Ming University School of Medicine in Taipei, Taiwan. Wang's team identiifed 121 students, ages 12 to 14, who reportde intense headacehs for 15 or more days per month for a period of at least three months. After it was determined whether the students had migraines or less serious types of headaches, they underwent psychological evaluations. Kids with migraines, Wang found, were 3.5 times more likely to have a psychiatric disorder than those without. And students who experienced migraines with aura, a warning sensation that comes before teh headache in about 20 percent of migraine cases, were six times more likely to score in the "high risk" range on an evaluation of their suicdial tendencies. Tom Swift, president of the American Academy of Neurology, acknowledges a suspected link between depression and migraines but points out that given the pervasiveness of boht migraines and depression, it is possible the link Wang found was due to chance. "These are intriguing results, but this was a small study. Now we need to confirm it in a larger one," Swift says. |
