New investigations on the typus melancholicus structure in migraine patients

In an earlier published study [16, 17, 18], it was demonstrated that migrai ne sufferers have personality traits significantly more strongly associated with the typus melancholicus than healthy individuals and patients with ot her mental and physical illnesses. They display a fixation on tidiness whic h manifests itself in an excessive striving for quality and quantity in per formance-oriented situations. The main features of their social relationshi ps are excessive helpfulness combined with an exaggerated tendency towards guilt avoidance and symbiotic attachment to their own families. They do not differ from unipolar depressives in these respects. The major aim of the n ew study is to examine whether the concept of the typus melancholicus in re lation to migraine sufferers as proposed in the first study is adaptable to explaining the personality characteristics of migraine sufferers ("typus m igraenicus"). Age-matched samples of 42 female migraine sufferers,40 female patients with unipolar depression, and 41 female control subjects took par t in the new study. The test instruments used were von Zerssen's Munich Per sonality Test (MPT) and a questionnaire specially designed by the first aut hor for assessing the typus migraenicus (German "Fragebogen zur Erfassung d es Typus migraenicus," or FETM). The results obtained using univariate and multivariate analyses demonstrate a confirmation of the typus migraenicus c oncept, although to a less pronounced degree than the previous study. This can be seen as supporting evidence that, independently of the study sample and the investigators, migraine sufferers display with higher random freque ncy a personality profile very similar to the premorbid personality structu re in unipolar depressives.