Association between personality traits and migraine headache

Migraine is one of the debilitating diseases that can interfere with human function. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between personality and migraine headache. In this cross-sectional study, 98 patients with migraine referred to the Neurosurgical Clinic of Kosar Hospital and Semnan Specialist Neuropsychiatric Clinics in 2017 with a history of at least one year of history of the disease and 100 patients in the control group were evaluated. The instrument was a five-factor neo-personality questionnaire with questions about individual characteristics. The mean± standard deviation of the age of patients with migraine was 32.4 ± 7.8. 53.1% of them were male and 59.2% of the patients were married. The mean score of emotional stability in migraine patients was significantly higher than the control group (p<0.001), but the mean scores of enthusiasm for new experiences in migraine patients were significantly lower than the control group (p=0.039). Notably, the score of extraversion or introversion factors (p=0.697), consistency (p=0.462), accountability (p=0.056), and all questions of the questionnaire (p=0.675) were not significant between migraine patients and control group. The findings showed that migraine patients are more emotionally unstable than non-migraine group, and they are less enthusiastic about their new experiences, therefore, by modifying the personality traits, it is possible to control the migraine.