title: The psychological profiles of patients with whiplash-associated headache.
abstract: Headache often compounds chronic neck pain following whiplash injury. To better understand post-traumatic headache, the SCL-90-R symptom checklist was used to determine the psychological profiles of patients with whiplash-associated headache and of patients with whiplash-associated neck pain without headache. The psychological profiles of these patients were compared with previously published SCL-90-R profiles of patients with post-traumatic and nontraumatic headache, and of the normal population. Patients with whiplash-associated headache were not significantly different from those with other forms of post-traumatic headache or with whiplash-associated neck pain without headache. However, when patients with whiplash-associated headache and patients with nontraumatic headache were compared to normal data, significant differences emerged. Patients with nontraumatic headache exhibited higher scores on all subscales, whereas patients with whiplash-associated headache differed from the normal sample only on somatization, obsessive-compulsive, depression and hostility subscales, and the global severity index. These differences imply that patients with whiplash-associated headache suffer psychological distress secondary to chronic pain and not from tension headache and generalized psychological distress.
authors.affiliation: Cervical Spine Research Unit, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, The University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Wallis
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Lord
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Barnsley
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bogduk
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006261:Headache / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D014911:Whiplash Injuries / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*