Personal characteristics of patients with tension headache

With tension-type headache (THT) with a high frequency (up to 90%), psycho-emotional disorders are detected in the form of increased excitability, anxiety, fear, and depression. At the present stage of studying the problem, the role of depression is especially emphasized. On the one hand, depression is primarily associated with neurotransmitter shifts in the CNS, in particular, with insufficiency of the serotonergic systems of the brain, which determine both the dysfunction of the antinociceptive system and the development of depressive disorders. On the other hand, chronic pain limits a person's capabilities, disrupts his life plans, etc. Such a decrease in the quality of life can give rise to secondary depression. It must be emphasized that the development of emotional-affective disorders, their severity, curability, tendency to relapse largely depend on the personality characteristics of the individual, which are determined by the constitutional features of the CNS reactivity.