A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Compassion-Focused Therapy and Transdiagnostic Treatment on Symptoms of Migraine

Psychological factors play a large role in the formation and intensification of Migraine, which is the most common type of chronic headache. Compassion-focused therapy and transdiagnostic treatment have found to be effective in a wide range of emotional disorders. The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of compassion-focused therapy with transdiagnostic treatment on migraine symptoms.

The present study was of educational clinical trial type, with pre-test, post-test, follow up and control groups. Population was comprised of people with migraine referring to Shahin Shahr Oil Industry Clinic in 2017. A total of 45 migraine patients participated in this study, divided into the two experimental groups compassion-focused therapy (15 patients) and transdiagnostic (15 patients), and the control group (15 patients). Experimental groups received 8 weekly 90-minute sessions of psychotherapeutic treatments of compassion-focused and transdiagnostic in addition to drug therapy for two months, while control group only received drug therapy. Subjects were evaluated using Najarian migraine headache questionnaire in pre-test, post-test and follow-up. Data were analyzed using two-way repeated measures analysis of variance.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of pretest and post-test in the experimental and control groups (p<0.01). Comparing therapeutic groups showed that there was no significant difference between the efficacy of compassion-focused and transdiagnostic treatment on migraine symptoms (p<0.05).

The results of this study indicated that compassion-focused and transdiagnostic treatments were effective on the reduction of migraine symptoms. It seems that the two methods can be used along with drug therapy to gain more efficiency in providing relief from migraine symptoms.