Self-regulatory treatment of headache in the elderly

We examined the utility of various combinations of relaxation, cognitive coping, and feedback in an uncontrolled series of 16 older headache patients (aged 60 to 77) diagnosed as having tension, mixed, or migraine headache. At 1-month follow-up, statistically and clinically significant reductions were observed in both overall headache activity and medication intake; 10 patients (63%) were more than 50% improved in both headache reduction and medication reduction. Female headache suffers were more improved than males. These results are inconsistent with our past findings with geriatric headache sufferers but consistent with other, more recent favorable findings. The efficacy of nondrug treatment for geriatric headache clearly warrants further attention.This research was supported in part by a grant from NINDS, NS-23440.