Dados do Trabalho

Título

The association between headache and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Southeast region of Brazil

Resumo

Introduction: Headaches have scientifically established tryggers, among it the psychosocial factors are of great medical importance. So, comorbidities like psychosocial stress and anxiety can act primary cephalea. Due to changes in the social dynamics during COVID-19 pandemic, debates in social media and studies about mental disorders have been received a great scientific interest.

Object: The aim of this study is to investigate an association between headaches and anxiety during the COVID 19 pandemic, analyzing new and pre existing scenarios - and therefore aggravated - of cephalus and mental disorders

Methods: This is a cross-sectional, retrospective and descriptive study with a quantitative approach. The data was collected through an online form, on GoogleDocs, “Headache Prevalences during the Pandemic” between september/2020 to january/2021.The inclusion criteria are: over 18 years of age, signing the Free Informed Consent Term (FICT) available online. Exclusion criteria were participants who did not fully complete the questionnaire or who live outside Brazil. To carry out the analysis of the variables, sociodemographic data were considered - sex, age, ethnicity, and place of residence; as well as clinical data - previous diagnosis of headache, symptoms or previous diagnosis of anxiety, the impact of social isolation with the headache, among others. Statistical procedures are descriptive measures, frequency tables, mean and standard deviation.

Result: In the present study, 59.3% of the volunteers (162, of which 147 were from the Southeast) reported headaches. The most prevalent was pulsatile headache, affecting 56.17% of the participants. Regarding location of pain, most participants reported bilateral pain (69.13%) and frontal headache was the most prevalent (51.85%). It was found that 70.7% (193) of the participants state that there was a worsening of anxiety symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and 36.3% (99) report that they simultaneously observed worsening of headaches. In addition, stress was listed as an important headache trigger throughout the study.

Conclusion: The present study indicates the relation between anxiety and headaches, besides an increase of anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the correlation of these data proves, considering its prevalence and great impact on patients' quality of life, the importance of the Unified Health System (SUS) to study and prioritize headaches and mental disorders.

Palavras Chave

Headaches; COVID-19 pandemic; Anxiety; Cross-sectional.