The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Signs of Migraine Headaches and Pathological Worry in Female Nurses

Pathologic worry is one of the most important stressor factors affecting the symptoms of migraine headaches among nurses. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is one of the psychological treatments whose feasibility and application in improving the symptoms of the disease have recently attracted the attention of the researchers. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effect of cognitive-behavioral therapy on migraine headache symptoms and pathologic worry among female nurses.

This research was a quasi-experimental (pre-test - post-test with the control group). The statistical population of this study included all female migraine nurses in Tabriz in the year of 2019 that 30 patients who received the diagnosis of disease based on ICHD-3 criteria and received higher than the standard deviation in the migraine headache symptom questionnaire were selected using purposeful sampling. They were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (15 individuals in each group). The groups completed the survey of Najjarian Migraine Headache Symptoms (1997) and Penn State Worry Meyer et al. (1990) as a pre-test and post-test. Cognitive-behavioral group therapy was applied to the experimental group during eight sessions of 60 minutes (weekly two courses for four weeks), and the control group did not receive the intervention. Data were analyzed using multivariate and univariable covariance analysis in SPSS.23 software.

The results of covariance analysis showed that cognitive-behavioral therapy has a significant effect on reducing migraine headache symptoms and pathologic worry in nurses (P = 0.001).

Considering that cognitive-behavioral therapy is effective in relieving the symptoms of migraine headaches and reducing the pathological worry of nurses with migraine headaches; therefore, the training of this therapeutic approach is suggested as an effective interventional method in the nursing population.