Background & Objectives:Tension headache is one of the most common types of headaches that millions of people suffer from it. So far different treatments have been used to confront with tension headaches. According to the studies,tension headaches usually respond well to nonpharmacological treatment. The objective of this survey is the comparison between efficacy and effectiveness rate of SIT and medical treatment for tension headache treatment.
Methods:In this study,30 patiens who had referred to neurology clinic of Alavi Hospital and privates clinics,during the months of June and July in 2003, with chronic tension headache complaint, were selected randomly. These 30 patiens were entered to two study groups and the third control groups. The patiens in the first and second group received SIT and medical treatment respectively. The third group was considered as the control group and received no intervention. Indices of headache frequency, severity and duration werw evaluated in 3 stages Before treatment,after treatment and within one-month follow up period)by using a headache record device for all of patiens. The collected data were analyzed by inferential statistical SIT methods, variance analysis and LSD pair comparison.
Results: The data found from ANOVA methods(Analysis of variance) showed that both methods (Stress inoculation training and medical reatment) are effective in the treatment of chronic tension headache, but comparison between two groups showed that the group who received SIT had a significant difference compared to the group who received medical treatment in terms of efficacy rate on duration and consistency of headache symptom (p<0.05). In other indices of headache (frequency and severity), there was no significant difference between these two groups.
Conclusion: This study showes that effectiveness rate of stress inoculation training is more effective than medical treatment of tension headache (in terms of headache symptoms duration and consistency)
