Current psychological intervention alternatives for the treatment of paediatric headaches: a narrative review

TL;DR

This paper reviews psychological interventions for treating headaches in children and adolescents, highlighting their effectiveness in improving quality of life.

Contribution

The paper provides a narrative review of psychological interventions for pediatric headaches, emphasizing their role in multidisciplinary treatment.

Findings

Psychological interventions improve quality of life by reducing headache frequency and intensity.

Combining psychological treatments with medication is effective in early stages of headache management.

Stress and mental health factors significantly influence headache occurrence in children.

Abstract

Headaches are considered as major health problems being common in childhood and
adolescence and are debilitating, thus, they lead to poor quality and low
performance in all walks of life. Among all types of headaches, episodic migraine
and tension-type headache are commonly encountered in the aforementioned phases
of life and are likely to have devastating impacts as they become chronic. Stress
factors related to school, peers and family, mental problems and traumatic
experience may play an essential role in the occurrence of headaches affecting
the lives of children and adolescents deleteriously. In this regard, there is
unanimity on the most effective treatment of both paediatric and adult headaches
through a biopsychosocial approach in which specialists from different fields
contribute to the process in a collective manner. There is strong evidence that
psychological interventions, which are among the basic elements of holistic
treatment, provide relief to patients, especially when applied in combination
with pharmacological treatment options in the early period. In general, the
research has indicated that such treatments significantly improve the quality of
life of children and adolescents suffering from different types of headaches by
reducing the frequency, duration and intensity of pain, as well as alleviating
the psychological symptoms accompanying the pain. In line with the thorough
literature overview, this study aims to shed light on the main goals, domains and
scope of application of psychological interventions that are widely applied or
considered auspicious in the multidisciplinary treatment of paediatric headache
in general terms.

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