A comparison of psychotherapeutic treatments for muscle-contraction headache

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to compare the following approaches as to their relative effectiveness in the reduction of muscle-contraction headache activity: (a) biofeedback training, (b) cognitive coping-skills training, (c) a treatment combining biofeedback and cognitive coping-skills training, and (d) a symptom-monitoring no-treatment control. A further purpose was to examine the relationship of subjects' pain tolerance to pre-treatment headache activity. Of the 24 subjects originally selected for the study, 22 individuals were considered to have completed the study. In order to be admitted into the study, subjects were required to meet the following four criteria: (1) answers to a pre-treatment questionnaire suggested that the applicant's headaches were most likely to be of the tension variety only; (2) volunteers were diagnosed by a physician as suffering from tension headache only; (3) volunteers received their physician's verbal approval to participate in the research; and (4) volunteers' records of their tension headache activity during a one-week screening period indicated at least three accounts of tension headache. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups or to the control group. Those subjects in the treatment groups received eight individual semiweekly training sessions. Control group subjects charted headaches only. All subjects recorded their headache activity for a two-week pre-treatment period, four-week treatment period, one-week post-treatment period, and four-week follow-up period. During the pre-treatment period, a cold pressor pain tolerance test was conducted and results were obtained for each subject. ...