Background: Migraine negatively affects sufferers’ physical and mental health and social and
economic status.
Objectives: This study compared the effectiveness of behavior management therapy and
pharmacotherapy in reducing migraine-related disabilities with and without focusing on comorbid
depressive symptoms.
Materials & Methods: This quasi-experimental study has a pre-test-post-test design with a control
group. The study was conducted on migrainous patients with comorbid depressive symptoms
referred to neurology clinics in Rasht City, Iran, in 2021. A total of 18 female patients were selected
using purposive sampling based on neurological diagnosis and the diagnostic and statistical manual
of mental disorders (DSM-5) criteria for depressive disorder. The participants were randomly
assigned to two groups after matching regarding age and severity of depression. Combined therapy
(behavior management intervention [BM] and pharmacotherapy [P]) was performed in two
groups during eight sessions, with (case group) and without (control group) focusing on comorbid
depressive symptoms. The data were collected using the Beck depression inventory (BDI-II), the
headache disability inventory (HDI) , and the headache diary (HD) and analyzed using multivariate
analysis of covariance.
Results: The first therapeutic approach was significantly superior to the second in reducing
migraine-related disabilities (F(2, 13)=10.43, P<0.05, Wilks Lambda=0.384, partial Ƞ2=0.616).
Conclusion: Combined therapy (BM & P) focusing on comorbid depressive symptoms can be an
alternative or complementary therapeutic method to reduce various disabilities in migraine patients
