ACT Therapy for HF Migraine

Background and significance. Patients with Migraine without Aura at high frequency of attacks (9/14 episode per month) are particularly exposed to the risk of medication overuse and chronification of their headache. The treatment of this category of patients can be difficult and they need a multidisciplinary treatment to learn techniques to manage their pain before than a chronic migraine condition has been induced. In recent years, non-pharmacological treatments have been proposed for treating patient with different forms of migraines and, among them, Mindfulness showed to be comparable to pharmacological prophylaxis. ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) belongs to the third wave of behavioral approaches used for different pathological conditions; the attention is focused on mental processes and the objective of this intervention is the psychological flexibility by cultivating six different positive psychological capacities; acceptance, defusion, sense of self, mindfulness, values, committed actions. Reports in literature documented the effectiveness of ACT intervention to improve disability and impact in pain conditions and to develop the resilience of patients suffering from different physical or mental clinical problems. People with low resilience are exposed to have more emotional difficulties in terms of depression and anxiety and stress, in particular when they are suffering from chronic pain conditions such as migraine at high frequency, which has high impact on patients life. It has been demonstrated that specific interventions addressed to promote resilience can be helpful to reduce the impact of the disease and of pain. Studies on the use of mindfulness and ACT in particular in chronic pain conditions and migraine have demonstrated how these practices are helpful to tolerate pain, to contain the use of symptomatic medications and to modulate some specific characteristics of migraine patients personality, e.g. rigidity, low acceptance, low resilience.