Women with Chronic Headache More Prone to Depression!
By editor | May 31, 2007
Stress is by far the most common headache “trigger.” Both female and male headache sufferers report that headaches are more likely to occur during or after periods of stress. Major life-changing events like marriage, birth of a child, or career changes all are sources of stress. However, research has found that it is actually the day-to-day stress or chronic “hassles” that are important in triggering headache. Compared to men, women often experience more of the types of stress that provoke headache.
Women experience depression about twice as often as men. Many hormonal factors may contribute to the increased rate of depression in women particularly such factors as menstrual cycle changes, pregnancy, miscarriage, postpartum period, pre-menopause, and menopause. Many women also face additional stresses such as responsibilities both at work and home, single parenthood, and caring for children and for aging parents. Women are at an increased risk of depression if they suffer from chronic headaches, survey findings reveal. The researchers found that women who experienced more than 15 headaches a month were four times as likely to have major depression as those reporting fewer headaches, and twice as likely to present with symptoms of other depressive disorders.
Chronic female headache sufferers were also three times more likely to report a high degree of somatic symptoms related to headache, such as low energy, trouble sleeping, nausea, dizziness, pain or problems during intercourse, and pain in the stomach, back, arms, legs, and joints. While everyone experiences headaches from time to time, there are a number of conditions that involve regular or repeated head pain. The three most common types of chronic headache pain are migraines, cluster headaches and tension headaches.
These crop up due to different sort of clinical disorder or unavoidable stress situations including multiple role stress, working women stress, financial stress, physical & emotional stress. Women are likely to have “multiple-role” which is stress due to managing many different roles and responsibilities. Common roles include being a mother, wife, professional working woman, and caretaker of the home. Often these important roles conflict with one another and women are forced to make tough choices between competing demands. Sometimes, women overextend themselves trying to do it all. Other times, women suffer disappointment and guilt if they are not able to meet all of the demands of family, home, and work.
The majority of women of today work outside the home. Although some women hold high-status and powerful positions, many more women have jobs with high demands and low control. These jobs can lead a woman to feel “helpless” in the workplace. Helplessness worsens the physical and emotional effects of stress, and also prevents individuals from even trying to improve their situation.
Women on average earn less money than men and have a lower overall standard of living. Therefore, women often feel pressures from inadequate housing, poor access to healthcare, and fear of unexpected expenses. In such cases, women also have fewer opportunities for recreation and escape from day-to-day stress.
Women are likely to be the primary caretaker in the family. Though many men are taking active roles in parenting, women still provide the majority of childcare. There are great joys in parenting, but it can also be a physically and emotionally taxing responsibility. Women also are more likely to be the primary caregiver for aging parents and ill family members.
If depression or anxiety is present in a patient with migraine, both disorders need to be treated. It is generally not true that treating the depression will make the headaches go away, or that headache improvement will lead to an improvement in mood. Specific treatment for both migraine and depression exists and will produce the best outcome. Women with migraine do not need to make themselves more important than anyone else, but they need to consider themselves at least as important as everyone else.
Tags: chronic headaches cluster headaches Depression Tips headache sufferers hormonal factors tension headaches
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Topics: Depression Tips |