Effect of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on Student's Migraine Intensity

Mindfulness is a mind-body technique, which is used for reducing stress and promoting quality of life in many patients with chronic diseases. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on the pain intensity of patients with migraine. Only 60 students in a total of 124 candidates met the inclusion criteria. The subjects were randomly allocated to intervention and control groups. The intervention group participated in 8 weekly MBSR sessions at the counseling center of Zabol University during October and November 2011. McGill Pain Questionnaire was used for assessing pain intensity before and after the intervention. Finally, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used for comparison between the groups and subscales. The obtained results showed no significant difference between pre- and post-test results in the control group. However, a significant difference was observed between the pre- and post-test results in the intervention group (P≤0.01). There was also a significant difference in post-test pain intensity between the control and intervention groups (P≤0.01). The results of the current study indicated the effectiveness of MBSR on decreasing perceived pain intensity in patients with migraine.