The role of home practice in the treatment of chronic headache with imagery strategies

Background: The beneficial consequences of home practice were too often tak en for granted. The few studies in this field provide equivocal results. Es pecially the success of home practice requires further attention. Method: Home practice and the success of home practice were investigated fo r two different imagery strategies: imaginative transformations and pleasan t imagery. 10 patients per group (15 female, 5 male, 8 migraine with or wit hout aura, 2 tension-type headache, 10 both types of headache) conducted ex tensive home practice protocols, headache diary and answered several pain q uestionnaires. Results: Both groups practiced once a day, as requested. The frequency of p ain reductions after the imagery training was significantly higher for the patients treated with imaginative transformations. Frequency of pain reduct ions is also correlated with the pre-post-differences of several relevant p ain variables (self-efficacy, suffering, fear, avoidance) but not with pre- post-differences of headache diary variables. Discussion: Implications for the psychological treatment of headache are di scussed. Our assumption, that the success of home practice is probably cruc ial, was confirmed.