BOSTON—In addition to the clinical features of the syndrome, individuals with migraine also suffer the stigma of having the disorder, often at the hands of friends, family, and coworkers, according to a new study presented at the International Headache Congress 2013 meeting.
Researchers at the University of Vermont and the University of British Columbia surveyed 765 Americans using the crowdsourcing website Mechanical Turk to assess attitudes toward several episodic medical conditions, including migraine, epilepsy, panic disorder, and asthma.
Subjects were randomly assigned to assess a fictional vignette of one of four conditions; each condition described an individual with attacks of migraine, epilepsy, panic disorder, or asthma occurring nearly every week. Respondents were then presented with the Attitudes towards Mental Illness Questionnaire (AMIQ), a well-validated tool to assess stigma. The maximum potential score on the AMIQ is 500; higher scores indicate greater stigmatizing attitudes. In addition to demographic data, subjects were also asked if they had ever had an episode of the relevant disorder, if they had ever been diagnosed with the relevant disorder, and if they had a family member or close friend diagnosed with the relevant disorder.
The lowest AMIQ score in this survey was obtained when the individual in the vignette was described as having asthma (250.1). The AMIQ scores for the other vignettes were significantly higher than that for asthma, but not significantly different from each other: migraine (266.5), panic (267.7), and epilepsy (262.3).
“As if the pain of migraine weren’t disabling enough, it also comes with a stigma that often renders it invisible at home and in the workplace,” said lead author Robert E. Shapiro, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurological Sciences at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. “Many people believe that the mild and tolerable headaches they experience are the same as migraine, and tend to discount the disabling impact that migraine has on the quality of life of those who have these attacks.”