The effectiveness of transdiagnostic treatment on pain anxiety, distress intolerance and sleep disorders in psychosomatic patients who suffer from migraine

Migraine headache is a common, painful, severe and debilitating in chronic conditions which can be characterized by recurrent and unilateral moderate to severe attacks.

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of transdiagnostic treatment on pain anxiety, distress intolerance and sleep disorders in psychosomatic patients who suffer from migraine.

The present study was a quasi-experimental study that benefited from a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The statistical population included patients with migraine referred to a psychiatrist in Urmia in the second half of 2020, who were randomly divided into control and experimental groups with 15 patients in each group. Measurement tools included Distress Intolerance Questionnaire (Simmons & Gaher, 2005), Pain Anxiety Scale (McCracken & et al, 1992) and Sleep Disorders Questionnaire (Mohammadi & et al, 2009). Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance in SPSS-26 software.

The results showed that considering ETA squares, there was a statistically significant difference between the control and experimental groups (p<0.001). Therefore; it can be claimed that changes and improvements in about 92% of pain anxiety, 91.6% of distress intolerance and 82.1% of sleep disorders have been due to the effectiveness of transdiagnostic treatment intervention.

The results showed that transdiagnostic treatment can be used in conjunction with drug interventions for migraine patients who can also be effective in reducing emotional symptoms, pain anxiety, distress intolerance and sleep disorders in these individuals.