PO-07 | Psychological management of children treated at the Pediatric Headache Centre of Turin: preliminary analysis

Emanuela Serri, Annachiara Lamberti Zanardi, Raffaella Mascolo, Barbara Lauria, Roberta Rossi, Sara Simona Racalbuto, Antonia Versace, Claudia Bondone | Department of Pediatric Emergency, Pediatric Headache Centre, Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital, Turin, Italy

Background: The management of headache in childhood requires a multidisciplinary approach, including pediatricians, pediatric neuropsychiatrists and psychologists. The current abstract describes ongoing management of children with headache at our Paediatric Headache Centre, aiming to describe depression and anger levels of patients with chronic headache and those with non-chronic headache. 

Methods: A sample of children and adolescents was assessed through an anamnestic questionnaire, the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), and the Children’s Inventory of Anger (ChIA), on the first pediatric visit or at follow-up visit at the Paediatric Headache Centre. In this preliminary exploratory analysis, the examined sample was divided into two groups based on diagnosis: patients with chronic headache and patients with non-chronic headache.

Results: Overall, 82 patients were included and tested, aged between 6 and 17 years (M=11.8 years). Among them, 18 have been diagnosed with chronic headache (age range 9-17 years; M=13.3 years), and 64 with non-chronic headache (age range 6-16 years; M=11.3 years). Results indicated that in the chronic headache group, 27.7% of the participants showed high levels of depression and 11.1% had clinically significant scores on anger inventory. This descriptive analysis highlighted that in the non-chronic headache group, 34.4% obtained clinically significant values on ChIA and 9.4% on CDI. The proportions of patients with high levels of depression and those with anger were not significantly different between chronic and non-chronic groups (p=0.6 and p=0.8 respectively).

Conclusion: Preliminary analysis suggests that the baseline conditions of patients with headache are complex, underscoring the importance of an integrated medical and psychological approach, which should involve not only the patient, but also their parents and the extended social and educational network. When psychodiagnostic tests indicate clinically significant findings, children and adolescents are referred for an initial psychological evaluation. This assessment may result in a psychological intervention or, when symptom severity is pronounced, in a concurrent neuropsychiatric evaluation. Based on the preliminary data collected, further analyses will be carried out to expand and deepen the current research.