The Psychological Profiles of Patients with Whiplash-Associated Headache

Abstract

Headache often compounds chronic neck pain following whiplash injury. To better understand post-traumatic headache, the SCL-90-R symptom checklist was used to determine the psychological profiles of patients with whiplash-associated headache and of patients with whiplash-associated neck pain without headache. The psychological profiles of these patients were compared with previously published SCL-90-R profiles of patients with post-traumatic and nontraumatic headache, and of the normal population. Patients with whiplash-associated headache were not significantly different from those with other forms of post-traumatic headache or with whiplash-associated neck pain without headache. However, when patients with whiplash-associated headache and patients with nontraumatic headache were compared to normal data, significant differences emerged. Patients with nontraumatic headache exhibited higher scores on all subscales, whereas patients with whiplash-associated headache differed from the normal sample only on somatization, obsessive-compulsive, depression and hostility subscales, and the global severity index. These differences imply that patients with whiplash-associated headache suffer psychological distress secondary to chronic pain and not from tension headache and generalized psychological distress.