we aimed to assess the effect of the psychiatric co-morbidities of migraine on medical university students.
Background:
Headaches are a frequent neurological disorder.(1). "Unprovoked headache lasting 4-72 hours with five or more attacks in a lifetime," according to the definition of migraine, "is severe enough to significantly limit or even prohibit routine daily activity and is accompanied by nausea or light/sound sensitivity."
We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study at the Khartoum University on 356 students chosen by a multi-stage stratified sampling for the batch and gender, followed by a simple random sampling using self-administered questionnaires. Our survey consisted of the Patient Health Questionnaire 4-item (PHQ-4) to examine the effect of the psychiatric co-morbidities of migraine on medical students in Khartoum University. Migraine diagnosis was made according to ID Migraine. We analyzed the data using SPSS Software version 26.
we included 63.8% females and 36.2% males. The age of the participants ranged from 17–26-year-old, with the majority between 20-23 years old. Additionally, 73.6% of the students were caffeine consumers, and 6.5% were smokers. In addition, 66% of medical students confirmed having two or more general headaches during the past three months. The prevalence of migraine was 27.25% in the whole study group. According to PHQ-4 scoring system, (36%) had a mild psychological distress (score: 3-5), (28.9%) reported severe distress (score: 9-12), while (24.7%) and (10.3%) reported moderate (score: 6-8) and none (score: 0-2) psychological distress, respectively. There was a significant association between the intensity of migraine without medications and the psychological status of the patient (P <0.05).
the effect of the psychiatric co-morbidities of migraine was variable among medical students at Khartoum University. Our study findings revealed a significant association between the intensity of migraine without medications and the psychological status of the patient.