MMPI manifestations of Chinese migraine syndromes: a control study

The investigation of personality traits of patients suffering from migraine headache with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is an important line of research, and differentiating syndromes in treating this disease is one of the characteristics of Chinese Medicine (CM). This study presents the MMPI-(Chinese edition) responses of 80 Chinese subjects with migraine and 40 non-headache healthy control subjects. Among them, migraine fire syndrome (MF) group consisted of 45 subjects (10 men, 35 women); migraine Qi stasis syndrome (MQ) group, 35 subjects (8 men, 27 women). The healthy control group was divided into healthy Qi stasis syndrome (HQ) group, 9 subjects (2 men, 7 women); and healthy normal (HN) group, 31 subjects (7 men, 24 women) according to CM diagnostic criteria. Statistical analysis was performed by pairs among four groups. The results revealed that both MF and MQ groups' MMPI profiles were significantly higher than that of the Normal (HN) group, and formed a 1.2.3.7 type slope. Profile deviation in the MQ group was slight, but in the MF group was serious and accompanied by a significant rising scores in F, paranoia (6), schizophrenia (8) and social introversion (0) subtests; HQ group's MMPI profile had a similar deviation as in the MQ group. The results suggest that CM migraine syndromes have an exact expression on MMPI profile, and that MMPI as an effective diagnostic method could be applied for CM syndrome discrimination. The "deviation of migraineurs' personality" may not be a special characteristic held only by migraineurs. The existence of different syndromes in migraine is one of the reasons that different scholars have reported different results on migraine by means of MMPI.