The association of frequent headaches with personality and life events.

The associations between personality traits, life events and frequent headaches were studied in a sample of 5766 adult subjects between 20 and 65 years of age from the general population. Subjects with at least weekly headaches had more life events and higher inadequacy, social inadequacy, rigidity and injuredness than subjects with less frequent headaches. These relationships were not observed in subjects of 50 years of age and older, with the exception of the association with inadequacy. From the traits measured, inadequacy had the highest odds ratios for frequent headaches and showed a modest interaction with the presence of a life event. These findings are in agreement with Sarason's interactional model.