[Stress, depression and anxiety in patients with headache. Considerations of literature and experimental data]

After having examined the main studies which suggest the existence of correlations between anxiety, depression and cephalagia, the authors report the results of a study performed in a sample population of some three hundred subjects. During the presentation and discussion of results they also comment on some of the main psychodynamic theories relating to the etiology of idiopathic cephalea. In particular, they examine the theories which relate the onset of cephalea to the inhibition of thought and those which instead connect the onset of cephalea to aggressiveness. The present study also comments on possible interpretative models along Individual-psychology lines concerning stress-related somatisation.