Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for migraine headaches in working women

Abstract

Women are natural multi taskers. This enables women to manage homes, children, jobs, in laws and many more roles and responsibilities. She works like a well oiled machine shifting gears efficiently. Sometimes there are stressors in her pathway. These stressors often cause aches and pains. This paper is an attempt to alleviate migraine headaches through a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programme. The sample consisted of 35 working teachers of the age group 33 to 54. Purposive Sampling technique was used. All the chosen subjects were victims of migraine headaches at least twice in a month. The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer, et al., 2006) was used to understand the level of Mindfulness prior to the intervention. The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory was used to understand the Life Stressors in the Women’s life. The intervention was carried out in 8 sessions. After the intervention, the subjects were again asked to keep a journal of their headaches. They were again assessed for mindfulness and stress. Results indicated that the headaches had reduced by 50% at least in all the women. Moreover, there was a marked improvement in their stress levels and improved awareness and non judgmental items in the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire.