Mental disorders don’t hinder headache treatment

Contrary to long-standing thinking, medications may offer comparable headache relief to those with and without mental disorders.

For an especially miserable time, mix recurring headaches with depression, anxiety or both. But people in such a fix have cause for optimism, courtesy of a team led by psychologist Bernadette Heckman of Ohio University in Athens.

Drug treatments for headaches work just as well for patients with these psychiatric disorders as for those with no such problems, Heckman and her colleagues report in the November Pain.