Migraine and Happiness
Objective: To investigate the association between happiness and migraine. Background: Contemporary operationalizations of happiness include the prevailing positive over negative affect and the satisfaction with life. Generally, extreme events and circumstances influence happiness only temporarily. H...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Mary Ann Liebert
2022-02-01
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| Series: | Women's Health Reports |
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| Online Access: | https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/WHR.2021.0122 |
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| author | Heiko Pohl Anne-Catherine Streit Maria S. Neumeier Gabriele S. Merki-Feld Willibald Ruch Andreas R. Gantenbein |
| author_facet | Heiko Pohl Anne-Catherine Streit Maria S. Neumeier Gabriele S. Merki-Feld Willibald Ruch Andreas R. Gantenbein |
| author_sort | Heiko Pohl |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Objective: To investigate the association between happiness and migraine.
Background: Contemporary operationalizations of happiness include the prevailing positive over negative affect and the satisfaction with life. Generally, extreme events and circumstances influence happiness only temporarily. However, how does periodic cycling between being relatively healthy and relatively disabled?as in migraineurs?affect happiness? Migraine is a primary headache disorder, in which headache attacks intermittently interfere with normal living and cause a significant personal, societal, and potentially irreversible disease burden.
Methods: In this cross-sectional observational study, migraineurs completed the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS), the Patient Health Questionnaire, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale and reported their headache frequency as well as recent changes in that frequency. Furthermore, participants answered a free text question on how to remain happy despite migraine attacks. We built a regression model with the SWLS score as the dependent variable.
Results: Seventy participants completed the questionnaire. The regression model revealed that happiness increases with headache days, and subsequent analysis showed a U-shaped relationship between headache frequency and happiness. The participants' advice on remaining happy focused on upvaluing the pain-free time or relieving the attacks themselves. The latter was increasingly common with longer disease durations.
Conclusions: Both high and low headache frequencies facilitate adaptation to the disorder, while intermediate frequencies resulted in lower life satisfaction. The nonlinear relationship between happiness and headache days may be due to ?hedonic habituation? and implies that headache calendars do not necessarily correctly reflect patients' difficulty to feel well despite the disorder. Many patients advised other migraineurs to increase happiness by enjoying pain-free time. However, with increasing disease duration, patients' recommendations focused on coping with attacks. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T11:22:31Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-75dde6d1b2f94c0283d8ab7806003032 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2688-4844 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T11:22:31Z |
| publishDate | 2022-02-01 |
| publisher | Mary Ann Liebert |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Women's Health Reports |
| spelling | doaj.art-75dde6d1b2f94c0283d8ab78060030322024-01-26T05:49:46ZengMary Ann LiebertWomen's Health Reports2688-48442022-02-013115516110.1089/WHR.2021.0122Migraine and HappinessHeiko PohlAnne-Catherine StreitMaria S. NeumeierGabriele S. Merki-FeldWillibald RuchAndreas R. GantenbeinObjective: To investigate the association between happiness and migraine. Background: Contemporary operationalizations of happiness include the prevailing positive over negative affect and the satisfaction with life. Generally, extreme events and circumstances influence happiness only temporarily. However, how does periodic cycling between being relatively healthy and relatively disabled?as in migraineurs?affect happiness? Migraine is a primary headache disorder, in which headache attacks intermittently interfere with normal living and cause a significant personal, societal, and potentially irreversible disease burden. Methods: In this cross-sectional observational study, migraineurs completed the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS), the Patient Health Questionnaire, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale and reported their headache frequency as well as recent changes in that frequency. Furthermore, participants answered a free text question on how to remain happy despite migraine attacks. We built a regression model with the SWLS score as the dependent variable. Results: Seventy participants completed the questionnaire. The regression model revealed that happiness increases with headache days, and subsequent analysis showed a U-shaped relationship between headache frequency and happiness. The participants' advice on remaining happy focused on upvaluing the pain-free time or relieving the attacks themselves. The latter was increasingly common with longer disease durations. Conclusions: Both high and low headache frequencies facilitate adaptation to the disorder, while intermediate frequencies resulted in lower life satisfaction. The nonlinear relationship between happiness and headache days may be due to ?hedonic habituation? and implies that headache calendars do not necessarily correctly reflect patients' difficulty to feel well despite the disorder. Many patients advised other migraineurs to increase happiness by enjoying pain-free time. However, with increasing disease duration, patients' recommendations focused on coping with attacks.https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/WHR.2021.0122satisfactioncopinghappysatisfaction with life scaleopponent-process theoryhedonic habituation |
| spellingShingle | Heiko Pohl Anne-Catherine Streit Maria S. Neumeier Gabriele S. Merki-Feld Willibald Ruch Andreas R. Gantenbein Migraine and Happiness Women's Health Reports satisfaction coping happy satisfaction with life scale opponent-process theory hedonic habituation |
| title | Migraine and Happiness |
| title_full | Migraine and Happiness |
| title_fullStr | Migraine and Happiness |
| title_full_unstemmed | Migraine and Happiness |
| title_short | Migraine and Happiness |
| title_sort | migraine and happiness |
| topic | satisfaction coping happy satisfaction with life scale opponent-process theory hedonic habituation |
| url | https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/WHR.2021.0122 |
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