Children who get migraine headaches are much more likely than other kids to have behavioral difficulties, social problems, attention deficits, anxiety, and depression, new research has found.
The study, published in the journal Cephalagia, also suggests the more frequent the headaches, the greater the other negative effects – suggesting for the first time that the mental-health conditions may have a common biological basis.
The study – conducted by Marco Arruda, director of the Glia Institute in São Paulo, and Marcelo Bigal of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York – involved 1,856 Brazilian children aged 5 to 11 years.
The results showed children with or suffering from migraine had a much greater overall likelihood of abnormal behavioral scores than non-headache sufferers.
"We found that migraine was associated with social problems," said Arruda. "The [links] may be associated with important impact[s] on the personal and social life… Providers should be aware of this possibility in children with migraines, in order to properly address the problem."
Children often suffer from headaches, with migraine prevalence ranging from just over 3 percent to more than 20 of children as they progress from early childhood through to adolescence, the researchers said.