Severe depression may be behind headache, study by Turkish university says

Headache with unknown causes may be a sign of depression, a recent study conducted by emergency service students of a Turkish university hospital revealed.

Emergency Specialist Burcu Poyraz from the Dokuz Eylül University's Faculty of Medicine conducted the research among 273 patients between the ages of 18-85 who applied to the emergency service of the university's hospital with complaints of headache.

The patients who accepted to be a part of the study were evaluated based on a depression scale. The three-month-long research revealed that a total of 56% of the patients had depression, while 8% of the cases were reported as "severe."

Professor Sedat Yanturalı who supervised the study told Anadolu Agency that the main purpose of the study was to determine the frequency of depression cases in patients admitted to the emergency room for headache.

"Patients with depression may have head and back pain," said Yanturalı adding that the patients arrive at the hospital for headache complaints, but the main cause of their problem may be depression.

Yanturalı stressed that many of the patients in question also complained of insomnia and half of those did not know that they had depression, adding that those patients were also less likely to respond to pain killers since they need to be treated with psychiatric medications.

Yanturalı said that those who applied to the emergency service with a complaint of headache that lasted more than 24 hours with pain and no concrete response to the medication are under high risk of depression, adding that those patients should be transferred to the psychiatry services.

The results of the study will also be published in a relevant international medical journal.