The study also found women with depression and Migraine were twice as likely to report multiple types of abuse as a child compared to those without depression, including physical abuse, fear for life, and being in a home with an adult who abused alcohol or drugs.
“Our findings contribute to the mounting data that show abuse in childhood has a powerful effect on adult health disorders and the effect intensifies when abuse lasts a long time or continues into adulthood. The findings also support research suggesting that sexual abuse may have more impact on health than physical abuse and that childhood sexual abuse victims, in particular, are more likely to be adversely affected.”
Gretchen Tietjen, MD
Comments and Summary
As the authors point out in the journal article, there have been many studies that established a link between headache and a history of abuse. However, unlike this study, they did not use the necessary criteria to establish diagnoses of Migraine, or speak to the effect of depression on the Migraine-abuse relationship. Thus, no conclusion can be drawn as to whether there is an relationship between Migraine and abuse when depression is left out of the equation.
The study results demonstrated that history of abuse is more strongly linked to Migraine with major depression than without, and that leaves the possibility that childhood abuse is actually linked to depression, not Migraine.
Let me try to make the findings and conclusions as clear as possible. Let’s look at the four elements discussed (history of abuse, headache, Migraine disease, and depression), which relationships have been clearly demonstrated, and whether Migraine disease has been linked to a history of abuse. It is important here to distinguish between headache and Migraine disease.
- history of abuse + headache = link established (by multiple studies)
- history of abuse + Migraine disease + depression = link established
- history of abuse + Migraine disease = NO link established
This leaves us to question history of abuse + Migraine disease = ? Research is now needed to determine if there is an independent relationship between Migraine disease and abuse.
