Abstract
About 1.2-3.2% of children at 7 years of age with increasing age up to 4-19% in adolescents are suffering from migraine without aura (MwA). The aim of the present study is investigating the personality style associated with children and adolescents affected by MwA, administrating the Rorschach test, and comparing with typical developing healthy controls (TD). 137 patients (74 males), aged 7.3-17.4 years (mean age 11.4, SD 3.02 years), affected by MwA according to the IHs-3 criteria. The Rorschach variables were treated as numerical variables and statistically tested with t-Student's analysis. No statistical differences were found between the MwA and TD for age (p = 0.55), and gender (p = 0.804). From the comparison between the two samples, MwA group shows lower W responses (p < 0.001), good quality W responses (p < 0.001), high frequency of detailed responses (p < 0.001), the presence of even minor form of good quality responses (p < 0.001), increased presence of animals answers (A%) (p < 0.001), more frequent trivial answers (Ban%) (p < 0.001). Rorschach interpretation pinpointed many interesting and, perhaps, peculiar aspects in our MwA population such as a trend predisposition for: analytical reasoning rather than synthetic, ease/practicality rather than creativity, oppositionality rather than external adaptation to the environment that may be interpreted as effect of general maladaptivity.
Highlights
137 Caucasian patients (74 males and 63 females), between 7.3 and 17.4 years, diagnosed by Migraine without aura (MwA) according to the IHs-3 criteria were consecutively recruited in each pediatric headache center or neuropsychiatric clinic partici pating to the study, between January 2010 and December 2014
Parents of children and adolescents of both groups gave writ ten consent and the study design and protocol was approved by Departmental ethics committees at the University of Palermo, Perugia and Catanzaro (EUDract 2010-000453-40)
In order to investigate personality profile of children affected by MwA, the projective Rorschach test (RT) has been administered to MwA and typical developing healthy controls (TD) subjects
Summary
Migraine without aura is frequent in pediatric age with a vari ety of comorbidities [2] that impact many day life aspects such as regulation and quality of sleep [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], mood regulation [2, 11], cognitive quality [12,13,14,15,16], motor coordination [5,6,7,8,9,10, 12,13,14], self-esteem [5,6,7,8,9,10], parenting styles [5,6,7,8,9,10] In this light, MwA should be considered as disabling condi tion in pediatric age, for the high risk of chroni city in adolescents and adults, despite of treatment [17, 18]. Migraine may be considered related to anxious symptoms [25] and stress and mood changes could be related to MwA, is not well known how MwA and mood may interact
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