Migraine in childhood: biobehavioural or psychosomatic disorder?
It is well documented that headache is a multifactorial disorder which includes not only genetic, biological, medical and neuropsychological factor but also psychological and personality traits. The close relationship between stress and migraine attacks and the significant psychiatric comorbidities in migraine provide evidence of a "paradigm" of tight interaction between somatic and psychological aspects in paediatric migraine. In particular in younger children, an uncomfortable situation, a psychological problem or an emotional distress is rarely expressed directly but usually through physical symptoms. So migraine may be considered as a disorder of psychobiological adaptation in which genetic predisposition interplays with internal and/or external environmental influences such as psycho-emotional, climatic, hormonal, dietary or other factors.
Department of Pediatric and Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Sabelli, 108, 00185, Rome, Italy. vincenzo.guidetti@uniroma1.it.
Vincenzo
V
Guidetti
Department of Pediatric and Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Sabelli, 108, 00185, Rome, Italy.
Noemi
N
Faedda
Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany.
Michael
M
Siniatchkin
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D008881:Migraine Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D011602:Psychophysiologic Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*
Biobehavioural disorder; Migraine; Psychological comorbidities; Psychosomatic disorder