Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Copyright 1982 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1982, Vol. 50, No. 4, 562-575 0022-006X/82/5004-0562$00.75After a 4-week baseline period during which daily ratings of headache activity
were made and all participants took several psychological tests, 91 patients with
chronic headache (33 tension, 30 migraine, and 28 combined tension and migraine)
were given a 10-session relaxation-training regimen. Patients who did
not show substantial reductions in headache activity from the relaxation therapy
were given a 12-session regimen of biofeedback (thermal biofeedback for vascular
headaches, frontal electromyograph biofeedback for tension headaches). Relaxation
therapy alone led to significant improvement for all three headache groups,
with a trend for the tension headache group to respond the most favorably.
Biofeedback therapy led to further significant reduction in headache activity for
all who received it, with a trend for combined migraine and tension headache
patients to respond the most favorably. Overall, 73% of tension headache patients
and 52% of vascular headache patients were much improved. Multiple regression
analyses revealed that approximately 32% of the variance in end-of-treatment
headache diary scores could be predicted after relaxation and that 44% of the
variance after biofeedback could be predicted using standard psychological tests.
Moreover, over 72% of each headache group could be correctly classified as
successful or not successful using the same tests in discriminant function analyses.
