Cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment of chronic migraine: a clinical case report

The paper describes a clinical case of a female patient with chronic migraine (CM) and shows a modern approach to diagnosing CM and assessing chronicity factors. The patient received interdisciplinary treatment that involved standard therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a psychological treatment for pain and emotional disorders. The use of CBT in this clinical case was justified by the fact that the patient had pain catastrophizing, emotional disorder, abuse of painkillers and their discontinuation problems, and unsatisfactory tolerability of preventive pharmacotherapy for migraine. CBT could change the patient's ideas about the causes and prognosis of the disease, increase her intraday activity, teach effective skills to overcome pain, and cope with the symptoms of anxiety and depression. A long-term (12-month) follow-up of the female patient receiving behavioral interdisciplinary treatment showed a clinically significant improvement as transformation from chronic to episodic of migraine, as normalization of the emotional state, and as an increase in daily activity.