Características psicopatológicas en un grupo de pacientes con cefalea.

Headache is one of the most frequent causes of medical consultation in adults. The objective of this study is to know the personality traits and the depression index in a group of 100 mature patients with primary migraine that go to a doctor’s office in the Department of Specialized Treatments (Neurology) of the Havana. The patients were classified according to the pain type referred: tensional headache; common migraine; classic migraine and clusters migraine. A questionnaire designed for migraine was applied to the 100 patients that came to see the physician; also the Eysenck test for personality type and the CRS test for depression were used. Statistical analyses were applied to the results of theses questionnaires. The Tensional Migraine was the most frequent type of headache (n=36), followed by Common Migraine (n = 29) and Classic Migraine (n=20). The average time of suffering the disease was 10.7 years with a standard deviation between 10 years According to the psychological test we use, 68 cases present an unstable personality and 64 patients showed an introverted personality. Forty-nine patients showed moderate or severe signs of depression. According to the results, more than one third of the studied patients suffer from tensional headache followed in order of frequency by common and classic migraine. More than half of the studied patients showed an unstable personality with signs of neurosis and depression, a fact that forces to proceed with the corresponding psychotherapeutic assessment.